The 6th International Conference on Matter and Radiation at Extremes (ICMRE2023)

4 / 2023-02-28 09:33:35

Novel materials for improving the laser induced damage threshold of fused silica

Fundamental Physics at Extreme Light > Fundamental Physics-poster

Improving the laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) of fused silica has been a quest for several decades in high-power laser system^{[1, 2]}. Here we introduce three types of novel functional materials that have potential applications in high-power laser system to improve the laser load capacity. These novel functional materials involve enhancing agent of LIDT, desensitizer of fused silica and insensitive fused silica. The enhancing agent can effectively improve the LIDT of fused silica when the fused silica is immersed in the enhancing agent solution and then rinsed with high purity water. The fused silica treated by the enhancing agent exhibits similar LITD to the fused silica treated by AMP2 procedure^[3]. The enhancing agent procedure is more scalable and repeatable than the AMP2 procedure. Desensitizer of fused silica is a material that possibly conserves the high LIDT of cleaned optics by reducing its sensitivity to its use environment. The principle of the desensitizer is to make the optics adsorb less organic contaminants and dusts. The insensitive fused silica exhibits lower laser damage growth rate than common fused silica^[4], which make it can resist more laser pulses. These novel materials provide a new way to improve the laser load capacity of high-power laser system.