Accelerated lifetime testing of fused silica for deep ultraviolet laser applications revised

摘要

We report on the continuation of a comparative study of different fused silica materials for ArF laser applications. After selecting potentially suited fused silica materials from their laser-induced absorption and compaction obtained by a short-time testing procedure, accelerated lifetime tests have been undertaken by sample irradiating at liquid nitrogen temperature and subsequent direct absorption measurements were made using the laser-induced deflection technique. The obtained degradation acceleration strongly differs between fused silica materials, showing high and low oxygen hole (OH) contents, respectively. As a result, a difference in the absorption degradation mechanism between high and low OH-containing fused silica is proposed. Consequently, two different scenarios for an acceleration of the absorption degradation are derived.