A recycling strategy of ion beam removal and recoating of sol-gel film on fused silica surface

Abstract

A recycling strategy is presented on ion beam removal and recoating of sol-gel film on fused silica surface, which is based on non-contact inert ion beam etching to remove sol-gel films followed by recoating on the surface of fused silica to realize the recycling of the anti-reflection films on optical components. Through the characterization and analysis of optical properties of the samples before and after etching, the influence of ion energy on the film removal is studied and further optimized. The results indicate that the ion beam removal method does not degrade the performance of the fused silica substrate. After recoating of sol-gel porous silica film, the surface contact angle, surface roughness, optical transmittance, and laser damage threshold are characterized and compared with that of the original coated samples. The results show that the performance is as good as or even better than that of the original coated fused silica, which verifies the effectiveness of the recycling method presented in this work.