Mitigation of organic laser damage precursors from chemical processing of fused silica.

Increases in the laser damage threshold of fused silica have been driven by the successive elimination of near-surface damage precursors such as polishing residue, fractures, and inorganic salts. In this work, we show that trace impurities in ultrapure water used to process fused silica optics may be responsible for the formation of carbonaceous deposits. We use surrogate materials to show that organic compounds precipitated onto fused silica surfaces form discrete damage precursors. Following a standard etching process, solvent-free oxidative decomposition using oxygen plasma or high-temperature thermal treatments in air reduced the total density of damage precursors to as low as <50 cm(-2). Finally, we show that inorganic compounds are more likely to cause damage when they are tightly adhered to a surface, which may explain why high-temperature thermal treatments have been historically unsuccessful at removing extrinsic damage precursors from fused silica.