Effect of the substrate preparation with CO2 laser radiation on the laser resistance of optical layers

Abstract Conventionally cleaned fused silica substrates were irradiated immediately before the coating process with a CO 2 laser. We then used electron beam technology to produce SiO, SiO 2 , ZrO 2 and Ta 2 O 5 single-layer and multilayer films. The damage threshold was determined with an Nd:YAG laser ( λ =1.06 μ m). We observed an increase in the laser damage threshold by a factor of up to 10.