Manufacturing a functional high-power laser optical component requires great care in every step. Even a flawless optical substrate is of no use if it hasn't been cleaned adequately before thin-film coating. And the cleaning techniques used in the average optical-engineering lab do not apply here. Researchers at Tongi University and the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Special Artificial Microstructure Materials and Technology (both in Shanghai, China) and the Tianjin Jinhang Institute of Technical Physics (Tianjin, China) are developing ways to clean fused silica and BK7 glass before coating based on better cleaning surfactants combined with ultrasound cleaning. The cleaning process affects different substrate materials in different ways.
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