Prevention of corrosion of silver reflectors for the National Ignition Facility

A durable protected silver coating was designed and fabricated for possible use on flashlamp reflectors in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to avoid tarnishing under corrosive conditions and intense visible light (10 J/cm{sup 2}, 360 {micro}s). This coating provides a valuable alternative for mirror coatings where high reflectance and durability are important requirements. This paper describes a protected silver coating having high reflectance from 400 mn to 10,000 mu. The specular reflectance is between 95% and 98% in the visible region and 98% or better in the infrared region