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Presently aspheric glass surfaces for the optical industry getting more and more important to reach the high demands on optical systems and designs. Still there is a limitation in polishing of especially complex structures and freeforms by mechanical methods with regard to process time and therefore economic efficiency. In the research activities a thermal polishing process for smoothing optical glasses is developed. It is the goal to polish mainly asperic lenses and other micro-machined structures on glass substrates. Due to the sensitivity of thermal stresses of glasses the glass body has to be heated for reduction of the thermal gradient in order to use a CO3-Laser for polishing the surface. The basic investigations using this combination of processes show the feasibility of thermal polishing. Further process development and advantageous laser beam guidance will show the polishing of complex surface structures.
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