Laser cleaning of particle and grease contaminations on the surface of optics

Abstract In the high power laser facility, surface contaminations on the optics will worsen the laser beam quality and damage the optics. Particle and grease contaminations are two of the usual contaminations on the surface of optics. In this work, the 1064-nm laser induced plasma shockwave cleaning is utilized to remove SiO 2 particle contaminations on the K9 glass surface. The results indicate the removal ratio can reach above 95%. The effects of parameters (particle position, laser gap distance and laser energy) on the cleaning efficiency have been studied in the case of single pulse laser cleaning. In addition, CO 2 laser (10.6 μm) is utilized to remove the dimethylsilicone oil contaminations on the gold-coated K9 glass surface. The results show that CO 2 laser can effectively remove the dimethylsilicone oil by properly controlling the laser parameters. The cleaned area increases with the increased laser power or irradiation time when the other parameters are constant.