Experimental research of laser-induced damage mechanism of the sol-gel SiO2 and IBSD SiO2 thin films

Abstract

This paper investigates the high-power laser-induced damage of two types of single-layer SiO2 thin films on K9 substrate, which are respectively deposited by IBSD technique and sol-gel technique, and have the same substrate parameters and the same film thickness. They were tested by surface thermal lensing technique to obtain the thermal absorbance and the dynamic response. The results show that the laser-initiated damage threshold of Sol-Gel SiO2 thin film is far higher than that of IBSD SiO2 thin film. And combined with threshold measurement and the microscopic observation, this paper well explains in detail the threshold difference between Sol-Gel SiO2 and IBSD SiO2 thin films.

A Laser Damage Threshold for Microscope Glass Slides

“…The generally accepted picture of the later process is the forming of plasma, which expands with a hypersonic velocity and emits a shock wave. This results in the conversion of the optical energy to mechanical energy [17,[30][31][32][33]. Figure 5a,b show that thermal effects primarily dominate the damage process, especially for 1064 nm and 532 nm wavelengths, as evident from the observed damage craters, circular scalds, and terrace-like ablated structures.…”

“…The generally accepted picture of the later process is the forming of plasma, which expands with a hypersonic velocity and emits a shock wave. This results in the conversion of the optical energy to mechanical energy [17,[30][31][32][33].…”