Hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets incorporated antireflective silica coating with enhanced laser-induced damage threshold

Abstract

Boron nitride (BN) nanosheets incorporated silica antireflective (AR) coating was successfully prepared on fused silica substrate to improve the antilaser-damage ability of transmissive optics used in high-power laser systems. The BN nanosheets were obtained by urea assisted solid exfoliation, and then incorporated into basic-catalyzed silica sols without any further treatment. The transmission electron microscope (TEM) images indicated that the BN nanosheets generally consisted of 2-10 layers. The antireflective BN/SiO 2 coating exhibited excellent transmittance as high as 99.89% at 351 nm wavelength on fused silica substrate. The thermal conductivity 0.135 W · m −1 · K −1 of the BN/SiO 2 coating with 10% BN addition was about 23% higher than 0.11 W · m −1 · K −1 of the pure SiO 2 AR coating. The laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of that BN/SiO 2 coating is also 23.1% higher than that of pure SiO 2 AR coating. This research provides a potential application of BN/SiO 2 coatings in high-power laser systems.

MXene/Graphene Oxide Heterojunction as a Saturable Absorber for Passively Q-Switched Solid-State Pulse Lasers

“…When the pump power increases, the saturable absorber may have more heat accumulation, which leads to the structural destruction of the MXene–GO heterojunction SA. Therefore, we will consider coating the MXene–GO heterojunction SA with an antireflection coating to reduce the accumulation of heat on the SA, to increase the thermal damage threshold of the SA and conduct experimental studies related to high-power lasers [ 47 , 48 ]. Figure 9 d shows the variation in the single-pulse energy and passively Q-switched pulse peak power with pump power.…”

Enhanced uniformity of zirconia coating for high power lasers via solvent replacement and PEG-doping

“…Even today, scientists still struggle with the inability of the vacuum physical approach to prevent microscopic atomic level defects and macroscopic nodulation defects. Conversely, it was found that the composition of sol gel system was uniform with higher LIDT than those of vacuum physical coating generally [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Furthermore, the sol-gel technique had many advantages [17][18][19], it was easy to control and adjust the composition of optical coatings, the growth progress of particles and properties of the coatings such as mechanical and laser damage properties.…”