Abstract

With the use of increasingly high power CO₂ lasers for material processing applications, parabolic copper mirrors are replacing transmitting optics because of their ability to withstand higher power without sustaining damage. Since copper optics are quite expensive, a protective coating of Molybdenum is presently used to increase the life of these delicate copper optics. SI Diamond Technology has found that copper optics coated with Amorphous Diamond Coating (ADC) have a longer lifetime, and perform better than the same optics coated with sputtered Molybdenum.

© 1995 Optical Society of America