Effects of ultrasonics cleaning and laser conditioning on the laser induced damage threshold of the antireflection

Effects of ultrasonic cleaning and laser conditioning of antireflective coatings on laser damage behaviors were investigated. The antireflective coatings at 1 064 nm were prepared by electron beam evaporation, and the samples were post-treated by ultrasonic cleaning and laser conditioning respectively. Laser induced damage threshold(LIDT) was measured and the damage morphologies were plotted by optical profiler. It was found that both ultrasonic cleaning and laser conditioning could improve the LIDT of coatings, but laser conditioning gained much higher enhancement. The damage depth had no obvious change before and after ultrasonic cleaning, while the depth became very shallow after laser conditioning compared with that before laser conditioning. The reason is that the ultrasonic cleaning