Investigating the medium range order in amorphous Ta2O5 coatings

Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group Conference 2013

Bassiri, Riccardo^1 ; Hart, Martin^2 ; Byer, Robert L.^1 ; Borisenko, Konstantin B.^3 ; Evans, Keith^4 ; Fejer, Martin M.^1 ; Lin, Angie C.^1 ; Maclaren, Ian^2 ; Markosyan, Ashot S.^1 ; Martin, Iain W.^2 ; Route, Roger K.^1 ; Rowan, Sheila^2

E.L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States^1

SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom^2

Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom^3

Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Warwick, United Kingdom^4

关键词: Detector sensitivity;    Dielectric coatings;    Fluctuation electron microscopies;    Ground-based lasers;    Heavy metal oxides;    High refractive index;    Medium range order;    Structure property;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/522/1/012043/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/522/1/012043

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Ion-beam sputtered amorphous heavy metal oxides, such as Ta2O5, are widely used as the high refractive index layer of highly reflective dielectric coatings. Such coatings are used in the ground based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), in which mechanical loss, directly related to Brownian thermal noise, from the coatings forms an important limit to the sensitivity of the LIGO detector. It has previously been shown that heat-treatment and TiO2doping of amorphous Ta2O5coatings causes significant changes to the levels of mechanical loss measured and is thought to result from changes in the atomic structure. This work aims to find ways to reduce the levels of mechanical loss in the coatings by understanding the atomic structure properties that are responsible for it, and thus helping to increase the LIGO detector sensitivity. Using a combination of Reduced Density Functions (RDFs) from electron diffraction and Fluctuation Electron Microscopy (FEM), we probe the medium range order (in the 2-3 nm range) of these amorphous coatings.