Enhancement of contamination growth and damage by absorption centers under UV irradiation

Abstract

Contamination plays a major role in lifetime of vacuum optics. Several efforts have been made to derive suitable models for lifetime prediction in laser-induced contamination related optical breakdown. But the broad spectrum of potential contaminants present in the various applications with their very specific contamination mechanisms complicates the derivation of universal optics degradation models. As one possible contamination initiation process, the impact of optical absorption on the laser-induced contamination and resulting optical breakdown is studied in this work. A set of specifically prepared samples using nanometer sized gold particles embedded in dense IBS anti-reflecting coatings is exposed to radiation of 355nm in low pressure naphthalene atmosphere. Even though the artificial defects are not in direct contact with the contaminant, their influence on the long-term optics performance in dependence on the particle concentration in the coating is evident. In the presence of naphthalene, the artificial nano-defects cause a significantly accelerated degradation compared to reference samples without those defects or in absence of the contaminant. For this specific type of contaminant, a correlation of the optical absorption and long-term durability is derived.