Micro and nano processing of materials of photonic interest by irradiation with high energy ions and laser pulses

The high-energy ions (up to 50 MeV) available at the CMAM center (ICTS) make it possible to generate , in most of the materials of technological interest, various patterns of processing caused by the high energy density deposited by the ions along their propagation traces (tunable between 0.1 – 15 keV/nm, depending on the atomic number of the ion). This high excitation can generate from point defects to selective amorphization. The processed/damaged pattern can be “tuned” to produce anything from amorphous nanotraces (a few nm in diameter and micron length), to micron-thick homogeneous damaged layers.
The macroscopic ion beam can be focused to micron sizes with adequate instruments available and/or under development at CMAM. Also, the ion beam can be “pulsed” electrostatically. Materials can also be irradiated in external beam mode to explore original functionalizations due to the effect of the type of atmosphere and continuous control of effective energy on the surface of the sample.
It is also available at CMAM of pulsed lasers (ns and fs) to study the original synergy of materials processing combining irradiation with ions and laser pulses.
Optical materials are studied for three main applications:
– integrated photonics (LiNbO3, Al2O3, SiO2, etc),
– optics for space instrumentation in deep UV (λ < 200 nm; multilayer AlF3, MgF2 , LaF3, etc.) and
– for diagnostic elements for fusion energy (SiO2, Al2O3).