Microstructure characterization and optical properties of sapphire after helium ion implantation

The (0 0 0 1) sapphire samples are irradiated with 60 keV helium ions at the fluences of 5 × 1016, 1 × 1017and 5 × 1017 ions/cm2 at room temperature. After implantation, two broad absorption bands at 320–460 and 480–700 nm are observed and their intensities increase with the increasing ion fluence. The grazing incidence X-ray diffraction results indicate that the {0 0 0 1} diffraction peaks of sapphire decrease and broaden due to the disorientation of the generated crystallites after ion irradiation. The microstructure evolution is examined by the scanning and transmission electron microscopes. The surface becomes rough because of the aggregation of helium bubbles and migration towards the surface. There is a lattice expansion up to ∼4.5% in the implanted area and the lattice distortion measured from dispersion of (1 1 0) diffraction is ∼4.6°. Such strain of crystal lattice is rather large and leads to contrast fluctuation at scale of 1–2 nm (the bubble size). The laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) is investigated to understand the effect of helium ion beam irradiation on the laser damage resistance of sapphire components and the results show that the LIDT decreases from 5.4 to 2.5 J/cm2 due to the absorptive color centers, helium bubbles and defects induced by helium ion implantation. The laser damage morphologies of samples before and after ion implantation are also presented.