Field Assisted Ion-Exchange Equilibrium Of Soda-Lime Glass In Agno3 Nano3 Molten Salt

Two step electric field assisted ion exchange technique has been widely used for fabricating buried glass waveguides. Many efforts have been made to pursue a one-step ion-exchange technique since the two-step technique which contains two seperate diffusion processes is quite complicated, cost and time consuming. A novel one-step electric field enhanced ion-exchange technique using a continuously diluted molten AgNO3 bath as dopant source has recently been developed to produce buried Ag+ concentration distribution in glass. It is well known in fabricating Ag+ Na+ ion-exchanged glass waveguides and GRIN lenses that surface silver concentration in the exchanged glass is significantly affected by the molten salt composition.