COL 9(8), 083101(2011) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS August 10, 2011
Effect of standing-wave field distribution on femosecond
laser-induced damage of HfO
2
/SiO
2
mirror coating
Shunli Chen (
^^^
|||
)
1,2
, Yuan’an Zhao (
ëëë
SSS
)
1∗
, Hongbo He (
åååööö
ÅÅÅ
)
1
, and Jianda Shao (
ïïï
)
1
1
Key Laboratory of Materials for High Power Laser, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
2
Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
∗
Corresponding author: yazhao@siom.ac.cn
Received December 31, 2010; accepted March 15, 2011; posted online May 31, 2011
Single-pulse and multi-pulse damage behaviors of “standard” (with λ/4 stack structu re) and “modified”
(with reduced standing-wave field) HfO
2
/SiO
2
mirror coatings are investigated using a commercial 50-fs,
800-nm Ti:sapphire laser system. Precise morphologies of damaged sites display strikingly different features
when the samples are subjected to various number of incident pulses, which are explained reasonably by
the standing-wave field distribution within the coatings. Meanwhile, the single-pulse laser-induced damage
threshold of the “standard” mirror is improved by about 14% while supp ressing the normalized electric
field intensity at the outmost interface of the HfO
2
and SiO
2
layers by 37%. To discuss the damage
mechanism, a theoretical model based on photoionization, avalanche ionization, and decays of electrons is
adopted to simulate the evolution curves of the cond uction-band electron density during pu lse duration.
OCIS codes: 310.1620, 320.7090, 140.3330, 260.3230.
doi: 10.3788/COL201109.083101.
In the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) and optical
parametric CPA (OPCPA) laser systems, multilayer di-
electric mirror coatings serve as the fundamental part
of multilayer dielectric pulse compressor gratings and
ultra-broa dband mirrors
[1]
. Laser-induced damage of di-
electric coating s ha s always been a limiting factor for
the constant and stable operation of high-power las e r
system
[2−6]
. Consequently, enhancing the laser resis-
tance of coatings becomes distinctly important. How-
ever, there are only a few studies dedicated to improving
the laser-induced damage thresho ld (LIDT) of mirror
coatings in the femosecond (fs) regime. Laser condition-
ing was verified to be invalid for mirror c oatings because
neither lo ng-pulse nor short-pulse conditioning resulted
in higher LIDT
[7]
. Moreover, low refractive index protec-
tive layer, such as half-wave SiO
2
single layer, was tried
by Yuan et al.
[8]
. Unfortunately, it was found that the
SiO
2
protective layer had no positive effect on improving
the LIDT of mirrors.
Fro m the 70s of the last century, a method for im-
proving the LIDT of multilayer coatings was a dopted by
suppressing the peak electric field intensity within the
critical layers
[9,10]
. In recent years, some investigations
have been conducted focusing on the relation between
the fs laser-induced damage and the standing-wave elec-
tric field distribution within dielectric coatings
[11,12]
. It
was also demonstrated to be effective by r educing the
electric field intensity at the interfaces of high-index
and low-index materials to increase the LIDT for both
Ta
2
O
5
/SiO
2
and HfO
2
/SiO
2
multilayer dielectric hig h-
reflective mirrors
[12]
. However, only the multi-pulse
damage behavior of samples was discussed extensively
and cor relative research on the single-pulse damage of
high-reflective coatings was incomplete. Therefore, more
comprehensive studies on the damage of coatings, in-
cluding single-pulse damage test, are necessar y. Some
interesting physics was observed from the single-pulse
damage experiment in this letter.
In this letter, HfO
2
was used as a high-index material
to realize high-reflective mirrors due to its relatively high
LIDT, and good thermal and mechanical stability
[13]
.
Two kinds of HfO
2
/SiO
2
mirrors, one with “standard”
(with λ/4 stack structure) design and the other with
“modified” (with reduced standing-wave field) design,
were prepared by electron beam evapor ation (EBE) tech-
nology. A 50-fs, 10-Hz, 800-nm Ti:sapphire laser system
was used to study the single-pulse and multi-pulse dam-
age behaviors of these coatings. Optical microscope,
scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and surface profiler
were employed to confirm the damage features of the
samples. In addition, a theoretical model was adopted
to illustrate the fs laser-induced damage mechanism.
All the samples were prepared from HfO
2
and SiO
2
materials with re fr active indices of 1.98 and 1.44 at the
wavelength of 800 nm, and optical band gaps of 5.4 and
8.3 eV, respectively. All the s amples were obtained at the
same depos itio n conditions by EBE. The b e am curr e nts
were 120 mA for HfO
2
and 60 mA for SiO
2
. Moreover,
the substrate temperature was kept at 200
◦
C during
deposition, while the deposition rates of HfO
2
and SiO
2
target materials were 0.3 and 0.6 nm/s, respectively.
The deposition pressur e of background gas O
2
in the
coating chamber was 2×10
−2
Pa. The structure of the
“standard” mirror was given by G||(HL)
12
H||Air, where
G denoted BK7 glas s substrate (30×3 (mm)), and H and
L standed for the high-refractive index material (HfO
2
)
and the low-refractive index oxide (SiO
2
), respectively,
with quarter wavelength optical thickness (QWOT).
In order to lower the electric field intensity at outer
interfaces within the “modified” mirror, we modified the
relative thicknesses of the H and L layers for the outer six
layers to shift the electric field peaks to more resistant
low-refractive index SiO
2
material. The coatings were
designed by commercially available thin film software
1671-7694/2011/083101(4) 083101-1
c
2011 Chinese Optics Letters