Control of optical transmittance by nano plastic forming

This paper reports a new method to control optical transmittance of a glass plate by means of nano plastic forming. Nano plastic forming is a newly developed process to fabricate nano/micro structures on the surface of various materials, such as glass, silicon, quartz, metals and plastics. In this paper formability of many hard brittle materials is studied using a knife edge tool. Then, optical function of nano structured glass plates is studied. Series of grooves are fabricated on glass plates by using a knife edge tool, and their optical transmittance is measured. Results indicates that the optical transmittance depends on forming conditions. In case that the pitch and the depth of grooves are optimized, the glass plate shows better optical transmittance than a flat glass plate.