Role of starting material composition in interfacial damage morphology of hafnia-silica multilayer coatings

Flat bottom pits, previously shown to be unstable above a critical fluence, may be impacted by interfacial characteristics of the multilayer. TEM cross-sections reveal multilayer coatings deposited from hafnium have fewer interfacial voids than those deposited from hafnia. To correlate this reduction with the occurrence of flat bottom pits, multilayer high reflectors deposited by reactive electron-beam evaporation form both metallic and oxide sources were damage tested with 3-ns, 1064-nm pulses. To shift the electric-field peaks to the adjacent interface, half of the sample included an additional buried half-wave of silica in their all quarter-wave design. All quarter-wave reflectors deposited from hafnia had flat bottom pit damage in the outer six layers at fluences of 20 J/cm2. Interfacial damage also occurred in hafnium deposited coatings at fluences as low as 20 J/cm2, but at significantly different depths. The only interfacial damage observed on the all quarter-wave coatings was at the substrate multilayer interface. Flat bottom pits were observed in the buried half-wave coatings with a correlation to electric-field position and preference to interface type.