Diamond Mirror for High Power Lasers.

High power lasers are used in a vast number of applications including laser manufacturing (laser cutting and welding), semiconductor industry (advanced photolithography) and medicine (surgical tools). These applications require optical components, mirrors in particular, that can withstand large optical powers in order to transport the optical beams from the laser to the target. Ordinarily, mirrors are implemented as multilayer coatings consisting of thin film dielectric layers of different refractive index and thickness, typically tens to around a hundred layers thick. In high power applications, imperfections and defects in these multi-layers lead to sites where laser energy can be absorbed resulting in significant thermal stress and permanent damage of the component. To address this challenge, we developed monolithic dielectric mirrors that do not suffer from thermally induced damage. Our mirrors are realized by etching nanostructures into a diamond surface, a material that exhibits many favorable optical properties and extremely high thermal conductivity. Our mirrors exhibit reflectivity greater than 98% and operate without sustaining laser induced damage under the irradiation of a 10kW 1070nm laser beam.