PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | September 22, 2014
Proc. SPIE. 9238, Pacific Rim Laser Damage 2014: Optical Materials for High-Power Lasers
KEYWORDS: Antireflective coatings, Polishing, Contamination, Silica, Laser induced damage, Laser processing, Optical coatings, Optical testing, Laser damage threshold, Deposition processes
The Z-Backlighter lasers at Sandia National Laboratories are kilojoule class, pulsed systems operating with ns pulse lengths at 527 nm and ns and sub-ps pulse lengths at 1054 nm (www.z-beamlet.sandia.gov), and are linked to the most powerful and energetic x-ray source in the world, the Z-Accelerator (http://www.sandia.gov/z-machine/). An important Z-Backlighter optic is a flat, fused silica optic measuring 32.5 cm × 32.5 cm × 1 cm with an antireflection (AR) coating on both sides. It is used as a debris shield to protect other Z-Backlighter laser optics from high-velocity particles released by the experiments conducted in the Z-Accelerator. Each experiment conducted in the Z-Accelerator releases enough debris to cloud the surface of a debris shield, which means that a debris shield cannot be used for more than one experiment. Every year, the large optics coating facility [1] at Sandia provides AR coatings for approximately 50 debris shields, in addition to AR coatings for numerous other meter-class Z-Backlighter lenses and windows. As with all Z-Backlighter optical coatings, these AR coatings must have a high laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) in order to withstand the powerful Z-Backlighter laser fluences. Achieving a good LIDT depends not only on the coating deposition processes but also on the polishing and cleaning processes used to prepare the coated and uncoated surfaces [2]. We spend a lot of time, both before and after the coatings have been deposited, manually cleaning the optics, including the debris shields, even though they are an expendable type of optic. Therefore, in this study we have tested new cleaning methods in addition to our current method to determine their impact on the LIDT of AR coatings, and conclude whether a shorter-duration or less labor-intensive cleaning process would suffice.
