Acid polishing of lead glass

Purpose: The polishing of cut lead glass crystal is effected through the dowsing of the glass in a mixture of two separate acids, which between them etch the surface and as a result cause it to be become smooth. In order to characterise the resultant polishing the rate of surface etching must be known, but when this involves multicomponent surface reactions it becomes unclear what this rate actually is. Methods: We develop a differential equation based discrete model to determine the effective etching rate by means of an atomic scale model of the etching process. Results: We calculate the etching rate numerically and provide an approximate asymptotic estimate. Conclusions: The natural extension of this work would be to develop a continuum advection-diffusion model. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg