• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.452-460
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• 2007

Ultra-low loss ZERODUR and fused silica mirrors were manufactured and their light scattering characteristics were investigated. For this purpose, ZERODUR and fused silica substrates were super-polished by the bowl feed method. The surface roughness were 0.292 ${\AA}$ and 0.326 ${\AA}$ in rms for ZERODUR and fused silica, respectively. To obtain the high reflectivity, 22 thin film layers of $SiO_2$ and $Ta_2O_5$ were deposited by Ion Beam Sputtering. The measured light scattering of ZERODUR and fused silica mirror were 30.9 ppm and 4.6 ppm, respectively. This shows that the substrate surface roughness is not the only parameter which determines the light scattering of the mirror. In order to investigate the mechanism for additional light scattering of the ZERODUR mirror, the surface roughness of the mirror was measured by AFM and was found to be 2.3 times higher than that of the fused silica mirror. It is believed that there is some mismatch at the interface between the substrate and the first thin film layer which leads to the increased mirror surface roughness. To clarify this, the contact angle measurements were performed by SEO 300A, based on the Giriflaco-Good-Fowkes-Young method. The fused silica substrates with 0.46 ${\AA}$ in its physical surface roughness shows lower contact angle than that of the ZERODUR substrate with 0.31 ${\AA}$. This indicates that the thin film surface roughness is determined by not only its surface roughness but also the surface energy of the substrate, which depends on the chemical composition or crystalline orientation of the materials. The surface energy of each substrate was calculated from a contact angle measurement, and it shows that the higher the surface energy of the substrate, the better the surface roughness of the thin film.