Development of high performance polarizer coatings

The research and achievements of high performance polarizer coatings by many scholars around the world are reviewed, including the spectral properties, laser damage threshold and stress control. For the performance requirements of polarizer coatings in China Shenguang series facilities, it describes the investigation of spectral properties, laser damage threshold, and figure accuracy of the polarizer coatings based on electron beam depolarization by Shanghai Institute of Opitcs and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(SIOM). Much work and achievements on design, preparation and past-treatment of the coating are given. On the basis of the research achievements, high performance thin films polarizer with low defect density and low stress have obtained. The Brewster angle thin film polarizer developed by our team has participated in the International Laser Damage Competition held on the SPIE 2012 Laser Damage & SPIE 2013 Laser Damage Symposium. The p-polarized LIDT(Laser Induced Damage Threshold) as well as the average of p-polarized and s-polarized LIDT achieves the best results. The stress-induced crazing of large aperture polarizer coating is also solved, by which the manufacturing of large aperture polarizer is implemented in China, showing the spectral properties of TP>98%, RS>99% and the flux property of 17 J/cm2(9 ns). Now, the prepared large aperture polarizer has supported the stable operation of ShenguangII-UP laser facility. ? 2016, Science Press. All right reserved.