CaltechAUTHORS
Published May 11, 2022 | Version Published + Submitted + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Diamond mirrors for high-power continuous-wave lasers

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Harvard University
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon University of Science and Technology of China
  • 4. ROR icon Pennsylvania State University
  • 5. ROR icon Naval Surface Warfare Center

Abstract

High-power continuous-wave (CW) lasers are used in a variety of areas including industry, medicine, communications, and defense. Yet, conventional optics, which are based on multi-layer coatings, are damaged when illuminated by high-power CW laser light, primarily due to thermal loading. This hampers the effectiveness, restricts the scope and utility, and raises the cost and complexity of high-power CW laser applications. Here we demonstrate monolithic and highly reflective mirrors that operate under high-power CW laser irradiation without damage. In contrast to conventional mirrors, ours are realized by etching nanostructures into the surface of single-crystal diamond, a material with exceptional optical and thermal properties. We measure reflectivities of greater than 98% and demonstrate damage-free operation using 10 kW of CW laser light at 1070 nm, focused to a spot of 750 μm diameter. In contrast, we observe damage to a conventional dielectric mirror when illuminated by the same beam. Our results initiate a new category of optics that operate under extreme conditions, which has potential to improve or create new applications of high-power lasers.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 19 September 2021; Accepted 26 April 2022; Published 11 May 2022. This work was performed in part at the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF award no. 1541959. CNS is part of Harvard University. Laser-induced damage threshold of the diamond mirror was assessed at the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory, Electro-Optics Center. This work was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (MURI, grant FA9550-14-1-0389), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, W31P4Q-15-1-0013), STC Center for Integrated Quantum Materials and NSF Grant No. DMR-1231319. N.S. further acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the AQT Intelligent Quantum Networks and Technologies (INQNET) research program. P.L. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE1144152. The authors thank Daniel Twitchen and Matt Markham from Element Six for their support with the diamond samples, and Michael Haas for software assistance. Data availability: The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Contributions: H.A. and M.L. conceived the idea. H.A., X.X., and S.G. performed simulations. H.A. fabricated the mirrors. S.M. assisted with diamond preparation. H.A. and P.L. designed the experiment setup. H.A. performed optical characterizations. D.W. assisted with beam profile measurements. H.A. and N.S. analyzed and interpreted the data. J.R., D.B., S.D., J.T., M.R., and S.D. assisted with laser damage testing. H.A. and N.S. wrote the manuscript with the help of all co-authors. F.C. and M.L. supervised the project. Competing interests: H.A. and M.L are inventors on patent applications related to this work (U.S. No.: 10,727,072, date filed: May 2016, granted: Jul 2020) and (U.S. Application No.: 15/759,909, date filed: Sept 2016). The authors declare that they have no other competing interests. Peer review information: Nature Communications thanks Richard Mildren and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer review reports are available.

Attached Files

Published - s41467-022-30335-2.pdf

Submitted - 1909.06458.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM10_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM4_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM5_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM6_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM7_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM8_ESM.mp4

Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_30335_MOESM9_ESM.mp4

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Additional details

Additional titles

Alternative title
Diamond Mirror for High Power Lasers
Alternative title
Diamond Mirrors for High-Power Lasers

Identifiers

PMCID
PMC9095672
Eprint ID
114692
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20220511-201605500

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06458 (URL)

Funding

NSF
ECCS-1541959
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
FA9550-14-1-0389
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
W31P4Q-15-1-0013
NSF
DMR-1231319
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
AQT Intelligent Quantum Networks and Technologies (INQNET)
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
DGE-1144152

Dates

Created
2022-05-11
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2022-05-13
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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Caltech groups
INQNET