Abstract
Plasma-assisted etching, in which the irradiation of hydrogen plasma and inorganic acid etching are integrated, is proposed as a novel polishing method for sesquioxide crystals. By means of this approach, low damage and even damage-free surfaces with a high material removal rate can be achieved in lutetium oxide surface finishing. Analysis of transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveal that plasma hydrogenation converts the sesquioxide into hydroxide, which leads a high efficient way to polish the surfaces. The influences of process conditions on the etching boundary and surface roughness are also qualitatively investigated using scanning electron microscope and white light interferometry. The newly developed process is verified by a systematic experiment.
Highlights
Mid-infrared laser sources with emission wavelengths from 3 lm to 5 lm, and within the atmospheric window, are promising light sources in the fields of optical communication, remote sensing technology, and semiconductors [1,2,3]
These results indicate that the irradiation of hydrogen plasma converted the sesquioxide into hydroxide on the surface of Lu2O3, and it is thought that the hydrogenation species in this reaction system was hydrogen radical because only hydrogen gas was used to excite the plasma
The Raman peaks were higher after inorganic acid etching than before plasma treatment, A nanometric finishing approach combining irradiation of hydrogen plasma with inorganic acid etching was proposed to achieve high-integrity Lu2O3 surfaces without introducing subsurface damage
Summary
Mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser sources with emission wavelengths from 3 lm to 5 lm, and within the atmospheric window, are promising light sources in the fields of optical communication, remote sensing technology, and semiconductors [1,2,3]. A novel finishing approach, i.e., plasmaassisted etching (PaE), combining the irradiation of hydrogen plasma for surface modification and inorganic acid etching for surface removal was used to realize ultrasmooth surfaces of crystal samples. In the process under development, irradiation of reactive plasma was employed to modify the surfaces of a chemical inert material to form a more active layer. 2a (ii) and 2b (ii), corresponding to Lu(OH)x, a mixture of LuOOH and Lu(OH)3 [28,29,30] These results indicate that the irradiation of hydrogen plasma converted the sesquioxide into hydroxide on the surface of Lu2O3, and it is thought that the hydrogenation species in this reaction system was hydrogen radical because only hydrogen gas was used to excite the plasma. By combining the characterization results of TEM and XPS, it can be proved that the modified layer was formed
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