Mechanism for defect dependence of damage morphology in HfO2/SiO2 high reflectivity coating under nanosecond ultraviolet laser irradiation

High reflectivity coating is designed and fabricated with HfO2/SiO2 stacks. The laser-induced damage experiment is prepared by a third-order harmonic generation of Nd:YAG laser (355 nm, 8 ns). Typical damage micrographs are obtained using atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). A theoretical model based on the thermal transfer is tried to describe the defect dependence of damage morphology. Three situations are considered in this model: single defect, couple defects and high absorption film. The calculated results show that the second situation agrees well with the experiment.