Detailed subsurface damage measurement and efficient damage-free fabrication of fused silica optics assisted by ion beam sputtering.

Formation of subsurface damage has an inseparable relationship with microscopic material behaviors. In this work, our research results indicate that the formation process of subsurface damage often accompanies with the local densification effect of fused silica material, which seriously influences microscopic material properties. Interestingly, we find ion beam sputtering (IBS) is very sensitive to the local densification, and this microscopic phenomenon makes IBS as a promising technique for the detection of nanoscale subsurface damages. Additionally, to control the densification effect and subsurface damage during the fabrication of high-performance optical components, a combined polishing technology integrating chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) and ion beam figuring (IBF) is proposed. With this combined technology, fused silica without subsurface damage is obtained through the final experimental investigation, which demonstrates the feasibility of our proposed method.