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Improvement of the environmental stability of sol-gel silica anti-reflection coatings

  • Original Paper: Sol-gel and hybrid materials for optical, photonic and optoelectronic applications
  • Published:
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Abstract

The environmental stability of sol-gel anti-reflection (AR) coatings on optical components is improved by an exposition to volumetric concentrated ammonia vapors. Coatings of 86 nm thickness are prepared by dip-coating in the silica sol synthesized by hydrolysis and condensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) in the ethanol solvents with a base catalyst. Due to the sol-gel process, the coatings have a large micro-porosity and consequently susceptible to contamination by adsorbing volatile organic compounds in the vacuum environment of high-powered lasers. The ammonia vapor (NH3) followed by hexamethyldisilazene (HMDS) vapor respectively at room temperature is used to reduce the susceptibility. This work presents how the concentration of NH3 vapor exposed to the coatings affects the environmental stability regarding to the optical performance, and shows that NH3 vapor treatment with volumetric concentration of at least 10 vol% can make the coatings substantially durable, combined with excess HMDS vapor treatment both for 24 h. Besides, different off-line methods of cleaning to remove the deposition of the vapor contamination within the coatings, including infrared heating, ethanol dipping, and plasma cleaning, are investigated and compared.

Graphical abstract

Highlights

  • Compared the NH3 treatment alone and HMDS treatment alone to the sol-gel AR coating, proving NH3 treatment dominants the contamination resistance.

  • Analyzed the effects of volumetric concentration of vapor NH3 treatment on the environmental stability of the sol-gel AR coatings systematically.

  • The least volumetric concentration of NH3 vapor exposed to the sol-gel AR coating to achieve substantially environmental stability is 10 vol%.

  • The effectiveness of three methods of off-line cleaning the contamination within the sol-gel AR coatings is verified.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22072139).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laser Fusion Research Center, Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, 621900, China

    Lin Huang, Hongwei Yan, Lianghong Yan, Taixiang Liu, Zhuo Zhang, Ke Yang, Changpeng Li & Yujie Qian

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  1. Lin Huang
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  2. Hongwei Yan
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  3. Lianghong Yan
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Correspondence to Lianghong Yan.

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Huang, L., Yan, H., Yan, L. et al. Improvement of the environmental stability of sol-gel silica anti-reflection coatings. J Sol-Gel Sci Technol 101, 630–636 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10971-022-05725-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10971-022-05725-z

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