IRFused Silica

3photon offers high contrast TFP plates: glass plates with dielectric polarizing coating. Thin film polarizers (TFP) can be a solution for many applications in optical devices and systems. For example, it can serve as an alternative for Glan type polarizers in laser systems, when a filtering of light source is needed. TFP plates are often designed to perform best at Brewster‘s angle. At this angle, the s- polarization beam is almost fully reflected from the surface while p- polarization travels through the element. This way the reflection losses are avoided for the transmitted polarization and does not require to have an anti-reflection (AR) backside coating for the p-polarization on the back surface.

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In dielectric coatings, fused silica is often used as the low-index material. It can be deposited in a vacuum chamber with electron beam evaporation or ion beam sputtering, for example.

Fused silica is also widely used for the envelopes of various kinds of lamps, if those are exposed to high temperatures or high temperature gradients. For example, halogen lamps and various kinds of gas discharge lamps (particularly high intensity discharge lamps) need to be operated with a very hot envelope in order to avoid depositions which would diminish the light output. In some cases, the high ultraviolet transmissivity of fused silica is required; that is particularly the case for excimer lamps. In the case of halogen lamps, the high UV transmission is actually often unwanted, and makes necessary the use of additional filter glasses.

Quartz transmission spectrum

Fused silica is amorphous silicon dioxide. It can be obtained e.g. by melting silica powder such that the grains are fused together, and cooling it down fast enough to avoid crystallization. Fused silica in a purified form belongs to the most important optical glasses, or more generally optical materials, both for a wide range of bulk optical components and in fiber optics.

Fused silicaabsorption coefficient

Highly purified silica, e.g. for fiber fabrication (more precisely, the fabrication of fiber preforms), can be obtained in a chemical reaction. For example, one can burn silica tetrachloride (SiCl4) in a hydrogen–oxygen flame, where the oxygen combines with the silicon and the chlorine escapes in the form of HCl. The resulting synthetic silica is deposited in the form of a very fine powder (dust), which then can be fused to obtain solid material. It may exhibit substantial OH content, but a very low level of metallic impurities. In order to minimize OH content of the obtained silica for application in infrared optics, one needs to avoid hydrogen by using a vapor-free plasma flame.

Fused silica can made by melting some solid form of silica and cooling the melt sufficiently fast to avoid crystallization. A quite high temperature around 1650 to 1700 °C is needed – far above the glass transition temperature of many common optical glasses. The required heat can be provided by an electrically heated furnace or by a flame (Verneuille process) obtained with some combustion gas mixed with pure oxygen. For obtaining high quality material as needed in optics, contamination with unwanted impurities, which is particularly likely due to the high temperature, should be minimized with a suitable choice of materials, e.g. for crucibles.

One can fabricate various other types of waveguides on silica surfaces (or somewhat below). This is important in the context of photonic integrated circuits.

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Another important application area is fiber optics. Most optical fibers, including nearly all telecom fibers, are silica fibers. Here, one usually does normally not use pure silica throughout because an optical fiber usually contains a waveguide structure. A common option is to use pure fused silica for the fiber cladding while having some kind of silicate glass (e.g. germanosilicate) for the fiber core. Particularly for large-core multimode fibers, one may alternatively have a pure-silica core (exhibiting particularly low propagation losses) and a “depressed cladding”, which is typically doped with fluorine in order to obtain a reduced refractive index. Most photonic crystal fibers are made from pure silica.

Fused silica transmittancecalculator

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Because the transmission distances in fibers are often very long (e.g. dozens of kilometers), sufficiently low propagation losses are generally needed, and this requires highly purified forms of silica. Indeed, the development of low-loss fibers, suitable for example for optical fiber communications, first required the identification of relevant impurities and the careful optimization of fabrication processes. See the article on silica fibers for more details.

Figure 1. Circularly polarized light changes the direction of its polarization as it moves. Similarly, taking φx − φy = − π.

There is not simply fused silica of higher or lower quality; it depends on the intended application (see below) what aspect of quality is relevant:

Fused silica transmittancechart

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Various trade names are related to the type and application area. For example, Herasil, Homosil, Optosil and Vitreosil are fabricated with flame fusion, exhibit high OH content (around 150 to 400 ppm) and are thus suitable for visible and ultraviolet applications, but usually not in the infrared. Suprasil and Spectrosil are variants made with flame hydrolyzation of SiCl4, having a much lower content of metallic impurities, but also having a high OH content. Very low OH content (possibly well below 1 ppm) is achieved for materials like Infrasil, Suprasil W and Spectrosil WF, made with a water vapor-free plasma flame. Often, such trade names comes with additional numbers for different variants which are optimized for specific applications.

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While silica has a very wide range of industrial and other applications, this article focuses on optical properties and applications in optics.

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Fused silicatransmission spectrum

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TFP plates are often designed to perform best at Brewster‘s angle. At this angle, the s- polarization beam is almost fully reflected from the surface while p- polarization travels through the element. This way the reflection losses are avoided for the transmitted polarization and does not require to have an anti-reflection (AR) backside coating for the p-polarization on the back surface.

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Fused silica transmittanceformula

The fabrication method (see above) must be chosen accordingly. For example, ordinary flame processing would often lead to a too high hydroxyl content for UV applications.

Fused silicarefractive index

There is also a variety of silicate glasses, which have fused silica as their main component but contain additional substances such as soda, alumina, germania or lime. They generally have much lower glass transition temperatures and also differ from pure silica in many other respects, e.g. in terms of the transparency range and the thermal expansion coefficient.

Of course, the surface preparation is another aspect of quality, as generally in optics. Various kinds of specifications can be relevant, e.g. surface flatness and scratch–dig specifications.

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Fused silica is sometimes called fused quartz or quartz glass. However, it should be kept in mind that it is an amorphous material, while quartz is crystalline. (When lamps are said to have a quartz envelope, it is always fused silica; the same holds for most “quartz tubes”.) Other common names are silica glass and vitreous silica.

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Thin film polarizers (TFP) can be a solution for many applications in optical devices and systems. For example, it can serve as an alternative for Glan type polarizers in laser systems, when a filtering of light source is needed.

One can use natural quartz crystals as the raw material, but this will generally lead to a relatively low material quality because quartz can contain a range of impurities (e.g. aluminum and sodium), which affect the optical properties, in particular the transmissivity in certain spectral regions. Therefore, one normally uses some chemically refined silica, which can exhibit a very low concentration of impurities.

Fused silica is used for a wide range of optical components, such as lenses, prisms, optical flats, mirror substrates and diffraction gratings. Key advantages are the broad spectral transmission range, the hardness and low thermal expansion – e.g. for large telescope mirrors, where the possibility to fabricate large pieces is also vital. Fused silica is also used for optical windows, when a high pressure difference between both sides and/or a limited window thickness leads to the requirement of high mechanical strength. For photomasks, the high UV resistance can be important.