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Customizing abrasives with chemical additives

Nature Reviews Chemistry (2026)Cite this article

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An abrasive flow finishing (AFF) medium (shown in blue in the image) is a viscous elastic fluid composed of a polymer matrix with, generally, shear-dependent viscosity (non-Newtonian behaviour, in dark blue lines) and grains suspended within the matrix, that interacts with the internal surfaces of a material (shown in yellow in the image) through physical collisions. The custom AFF media detailed here were developed from various recycled rubber and silicone materials to polish complex internal surfaces of threaded bores, internal grooves, and tortuous channels. The hard grains (red polygons in the image) are made of silicon carbide or aluminium oxide and grind away at the internal surfaces (highlighted with white circles) where the scraped-off materials can be reclaimed, while the polymer matrix provides the elasticity necessary for moving the abrasives into the inner parts of the material being polished. As both the polymer matrix and grains can be customized, such AFF media can act as sustainable and universal tools for precise, internal surface treatments of various materials.

These abrasives can also be efficiently used for cutting applications (such as to create complex channels and threads) on the micron-scale. Through systematic changes in additive concentration, viscoelastic behaviour of the abrasive medium can be adjusted to visualize the distribution of the pressure across a material. By tunning type and concentration of additives (surfactants or plasticizers) in the polymer matrix, it is possible to set the AFF medium’s yield stress and viscosity. Practically, only the areas exposed to sufficiently high pressure exceeding the threshold will cause the fluid to flow, polishing the appropriate areas. The resulting pattern of abrasion (or any other stress-indicating marker in the medium) effectively maps the pattern of pressure on the surface of the material. The result is a better surface finish, such as the polishing of corners and internal threads to sub-micron smoothness.

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Acknowledgements

A.A is grateful for funding from the Chinese Government Scholarship Council (CSC) High Talent Program under CSC no. 2024GSP008969. A.A is also thankful to his supervisor Y. Tian at the School of Mechanical Engineering and Shandong Key Laboratory of High-Performance Precision Manufacturing and Hybrid Machining, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, 255049, PR China. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CSC.

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  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, PR China

    Arsalan Ahmad

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  1. Arsalan Ahmad
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Correspondence to Arsalan Ahmad.

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Ahmad, A. Customizing abrasives with chemical additives. Nat Rev Chem (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-026-00818-7

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