Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Laser-driven formation of a high-pressure phase in amorphous silica

Abstract

Because of its simple composition, vast availability in pure form and ease of processing, vitreous silica is often used as a model to study the physics of amorphous solids. Research in amorphous silica is also motivated by its ubiquity in modern technology, a prominent example being as bulk material in transmissive and diffractive optics for high-power laser applications such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF)1,2. In these applications, stability under high-fluence laser irradiation is a key requirement3, with optical breakdown occurring when the fluence of the beam is higher than the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of the material3. The optical strength of polished fused silica transmissive optics is limited by their surface LIDT3. Surface optical breakdown is accompanied by densification4, formation of point defects5, cratering, material ejection, melting and cracking3. Through a combination of electron diffraction and infrared reflectance measurements we show here that synthetic vitreous silica transforms partially into a defective form of the high-pressure stishovite phase under high-intensity (GW cm−2) laser irradiation. This phase transformation offers one suitable mechanism by which laser-induced damage grows catastrophically once initiated, thereby dramatically shortening the service lifetime of optics used for high-power photonics.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Images of the laser-damaged surface of polished fused silica windows.
Figure 2: A crystalline particle of the deposited material after HF etching.
Figure 3: Infrared reflectance spectra of the deposited material.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Paisner, J.A. The national ignition facility project. Fusion Technol. 26, 755–766 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Glanz, J. A harsh light falls on NIF. Science 277, 304–305 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials Collected papers 1960–1999 (SPIE, Bellingham, Washington, 1999).

  4. Wong, J. et al. in Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials (eds Exarhos, G.J., Guenther, A.H., Lewis, K.L., Soileau, M.J. & Stolz, C.J.) 466–467 (SPIE 4347, Bellingham, Washington, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Stevens-Kalceff, M.A., Stetsmans, A. & Wong, J. Defects induced in fused silica by high fluence ultraviolet laser pulses at 355 nm. Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 758–760 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Salleo, A., Sands, T. & Génin, F.Y. Machining of transparent materials using an infrared and UV nanosecond pulsed laser. Appl. Phys. A 71, 601–608 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Génin, F.Y., Salleo, A., Pistor, T.V. & Chase, L.L. Role of intensification by cracks in optical breakdown on surfaces. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 18, 2607–2616 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Stuart, B.C. et al. Optical ablation by high-power short-pulse lasers. J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 13, 459–468 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Hofmeister, A.M., Xu, J. & Akimoto, S. Infrared spectroscopy of synthetic and natural stishovite. Am. Mineral. 75, 951–955 (1990).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Williams, Q. & Jeanloz, R. Spectroscopic evidence for pressure-induced coordinated changes in silicate glasses and melts. Science 239, 902–905 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Dubrovinsky, L.S. et al. Experimental and theoretical identification of a new high-pressure phase of silica. Nature 388, 362–365 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. El Goresy, A., Dubrovinsky, L., Sharp, T.G., Saxena, S.K. & Chen, M. A Monoclinic Post-Stishovite Polymorph of Silica in the Shergotty Meteorite. Science 288, 1632–1634 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. German, V.N., Podurets, M.A. & Trunin, R.F. Synthesis of a high-density phase of silicon dioxide in shock waves. Sov. Phys.-JETP 37, 107 (1973).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Haines, J., Leger, J.M., Gorelli, F. & Hanfland, M. Crystalline post-quartz phase in silica at high pressure. Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 155503 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Kingma, K.J., Mao, H.K. & Hemley, R.J. Synchrotron X-Ray diffraction of SiO2 to multimegabar pressures. High Press. Res. 14, 363–374 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Liu, L.G., Bassett, W.A. & Sharry, J. New high-pressure modifications of GeO2 and SiO2 . J. Geophys. Res. 83, 2301–2305 (1978).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Kleeman, J.D. & Ahrens, T.J. Shock-induced transition of quartz to stishovite. J. Geophys. Res. 78, 5954–5960 (1973).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Teter, D.M., Hemley, R.J., Kresse, G. & Hafner, J. High pressure polymorphism in silica. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2145–2148 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Dean, P. The vibrational properties of disordered systems: numerical studies. Rev. Mod. Phys. 44, 127–168 (1972).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Almeida, R.M. Detection of LO modes in glass by infrared reflection spectroscopy at oblique incidence. Phys. Rev. B 45, 161–170 (1992).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Hu, S.M. Infrared absorption spectra of SiO2 precipitates of various shapes in silicon: Calculated and experimental. J. Appl. Phys. 51, 5945–5948 (1980).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Salleo, A. et al. Energy deposition at front and rear surfaces during ps laser interaction with fused silica. Appl. Phys. Lett. 78, 2840–2842 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Gratz, A.J., Deloach, L.D., Clough, T.M. & Nellis, W.J. Shock amorphization of cristobalite. Science 259, 663–666 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Gratz, A.J. et al. Shock metamorphism of quartz with initial temperatures −170 to +1000°C. Phys. Chem. Min. 19, 267–288 (1992).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Fedoseev, D.V., Varshavskaya, I.G., Lavrant'ev, A.V. & Derjaguin, B.V. Phase transformations in highly dispersed powders during their rapid heating and cooling. Power Technol. 44, 125–129 (1985).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Alam, M., DebRoy, T., Roy, R. & Breval, E. High-pressure phases of SiO2 made in air by Fedoseev-Derjaguin laser process. Appl. Phys. Lett. 53, 1687–1690 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Stishov, S.M. & Popova, S.V. New dense polymorphic modification of silica. Geokhim. 10, 837–839 (1961).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Alvarez, J.R. & Rez, P. Electronic structure of stishovite. Solid State Commun. 108, 37–42 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Trave, A., Tangney, P., Scandolo, S., Pasquarello, A. & Car, R. Pressure-induced structural changes in liquid SiO2 from ab-initio simulations. Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 245504 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Brusasco, R.M., Penetrante, B.M., Butler, J.A. & Hrubesh, L.W. in Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials (eds Exarhos, G.J., Guenther, A.H., Lewis, K.L., Soileau, M.J. & Stolz, C.J.) 40–47 (SPIE, Bellingham, Washington, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Synthetic stishovite was provided by Baosheng Li at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Work performed at the National Center for Electron Microscopy and at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Material Sciences Division of the US Department of Energy. The authors wish to thank Doreen Ah Tye for her help with the SEM analysis, William S. Wong and Kateri E. Paul for helpful discussions. Work by two of the authors (A.S. and F.Y.G.) was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Work by W.R. P. was partially supported by the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alberto Salleo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Salleo, A., Taylor, S., Martin, M. et al. Laser-driven formation of a high-pressure phase in amorphous silica. Nature Mater 2, 796–800 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1013

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1013

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing