Confocal Detection of Rayleigh Scattering for Residual Stress Measurement in Chemically Tempered Glass

A new optical method is presented for evaluation of the stress profile in chemically tempered (chemically strengthened) glass based on confocal detection of scattered laser beam. Theoretically, a lateral resolution of 0.2 μm and a depth resolution of 0.6 μm could be achieved by using a confocal microscope with high-NA immersion objective. The stress profile in the 250 μm thick surface layer of chemically tempered lithium aluminosilicate glass was measured with a high spatial resolution to illustrate the capability of the method. The confocal method is validated using transmission photoelastic and Na+ ion concentration profile measurement. Compositional influence on the stress-optic coefficient is calculated and discussed. Our method opens up new possibilities for three-dimensional scattered light tomography of mechanical imaging in birefringent materials.