Laser conditioning effect on HfO₂/SiO₂ film

Laser conditioning is one of the important methods to improve the laser damage threshold of film optics. Firstly, a large aperture laser was used to irradiate the HfO2/SiO2 reflectors, which were evaporated from hafnia and silica by e-beam. Secondly, a laser calorimeter was used to test the film absorption before and after laser irradiation. Focused ion beam (FIB) was few reported using on laser film, it was used to study the damage morphology and explore the cause of damage. The shooting of the partial ejection on nodule was obtained for the first time, which provided the basis for study the damage process. The results show that film absorption was decreased obviously after the laser irradiation, laser conditioning can raise the laser damage threshold by the cleaning mechanism. For the HfO2/SiO2 reflectors, laser conditioning was effective to eject the nodules on substrate. It resulted from the nodule residue not to affect the subsequent laser. In addition, laser conditioning was not effective to the nodule in the film, which might be from the material spatter in coating process. In this case, other method could be used to get rid of the nodules.