Accelerated life time testing of fused silica for DUV laser applications revised

Abstract

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 life time tests have been undertaken by sample irradiating at liquid nitrogen temperature and subsequent direct absorption measurements using the laser induced deflection (LID) technique. The obtained degradation acceleration strongly differs between fused silica materials showing high and low 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.