The Choice of Solvents for Cleaning Metal Optics in Order to Increase the Threshold of Optical Damage

Abstract

Abstract Metal optics is actively used in IR optics, which makes it necessary to clean it from dust and other operational contaminants. This increases the life of these notably expensive products. Usually their mechanical wiping is excluded, since it leads to the appearance of scratches and other defects on the surface, markedly increasing the scattering of radiation. Methods for the selection of solvents have been analyzed and experiments have been carried out that make it possible to accept efficient their use in the purification of metal optics from contaminations. Contaminations have different physicochemical properties and are present, as a rule, together on the surface of metal optics (taking into account the corrosion properties of the latter). Solvent compositions based on azeotrope mixes with freon-114B2, having a solubility parameter (δ) corresponding or close to the solubility parameter (δ) of the main (by weight) contamination or a mixture of contaminants which are present on the optical surface, were used.