Hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets incorporated antireflective silica coating with enhanced laser-induced damage threshold

Abstract

Boron nitride (BN) nanosheets incorporated silica antireflective (AR) coating was successfully prepared on fused silica substrate to improve the antilaser-damage ability of transmissive optics used in high-power laser systems. The BN nanosheets were obtained by urea assisted solid exfoliation, and then incorporated into basic-catalyzed silica sols without any further treatment. The transmission electron microscope (TEM) images indicated that the BN nanosheets generally consisted of 2–10 layers. The antireflective BN/$\text{SiO}_{2}$ coating exhibited excellent transmittance as high as 99.89% at 351 nm wavelength on fused silica substrate. The thermal conductivity $0.135~\text{W}\cdot \text{m}^{-1}\cdot \text{K}^{-1}$ of the BN/$\text{SiO}_{2}$ coating with 10% BN addition was about 23% higher than $0.11~\text{W}\cdot \text{m}^{-1}\cdot \text{K}^{-1}$ of the pure $\text{SiO}_{2}$ AR coating. The laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of that BN/$\text{SiO}_{2}$ coating is also 23.1% higher than that of pure $\text{SiO}_{2}$ AR coating. This research provides a potential application of BN/$\text{SiO}_{2}$ coatings in high-power laser systems.