Thermal Annealing and Laser Treatment of Sol-gel Derived Zirconia Thin Films

Abstract

Soluble precursor powders were prepared from zirconium propoxide and acetylacetone by evaporation of volatile products directly after the hydrolysis step. Dissolution of the solid residue resulted in solutions that were further processed by dip coating on glass substrates. One set of asdried films was thermally annealed in an oven at temperatures between 300 and 600°C. In parallel, samples were irradiated by a CO2 laser, in doing so laser power density and beam feed rate were varied. The thermally cured and laser treated film series were characterized with respect to film thickness, refractive index, phase content, crystallite size and film microstructure.

Microcrystallization Effects Induced by Laser Annealing in Cr-Al-C Ion-Beam-Sputtered Films

“…Laser-induced temperature changes might be suitable for the in situ monitoring of the repair of defective sites in fused-silica optical components [ 31 ]. Structural phase transformation induced by the laser irradiation of surfaces was also reported in [ 32 ], where it was pointed out that, whereas the conventional thermal heating of TiO 2 samples resulted in the formation of only the anatase phase, laser annealing exclusively produced on the same as-deposited sample the rutile phase.…”