We have monitored the reflectivity of mirrors that were exposed to a fluoroelastomer (3M-Fluorel 2176) and a room-temperature vulcanizing silicone rubber (RTV-615) in vacuum. The 95% confidence limit on the decrease of mirror reflectivities was less than 0.35 ppm/week for Fluorel and <0.29 ppm@week for RTV-615

Abramovici, A.

Lyons, T. T.

Raab, F. J.

English

Caltech Authors - Main

TECHNICAL NOTE
Measured limits to contamination
of optical surfaces by elastomers in vacuum
A. Abramovici, T. T. Lyons, and F. J. Raab
We have monitored the reflectivity of mirrors that were exposed to a fluoroelastomer 13M-Fluorel 21762
and a room-temperature vulcanizing silicone rubber 1RTV-6152 in vacuum. The 95% confidence limit on
the decrease of mirror reflectivities was less than 0.35 ppm@week for Fluorel and ,0.29 ppm@week for
RTV-615.
Key words: Optical contamination, elastomers, vacuum outgassing, optical losses.The contamination of optical surfaces in vacuum is an
important issue in many critical optics applications.
Elastomers are often desirable for inclusion in vacuum
systems either as seals or for their mechanical proper-
ties. For example, gravitational-wave detectors1may
use vibration isolation systems made with elastom-
ers2 in vacuum. Here we address the concern that
the Fluorel and RTV-615 springs used in such isola-
tion systems may contaminate mirrors in vacuum.
Previous research in this area has focused on measur-
ing outgassing and deposition kinetics, primarily for
certifying materials as acceptable for satellite use.3
Predicting the change in optical properties from the
amount of surface contaminant is difficult.
We have attempted to avoid these difficulties by
measuring optical degradation directly, at room tem-
perature, and at pressures and time scales relevant
for laboratory optical experiments. We have tested
sample elastomers by placing a specimen in a cleaned
and baked vacuum chamber with a high-finesse
Fabry–Perot cavity. Except for the specimen, only
metal and glasswere used inside the vacuum chamber.
The chamber was then evacuated, and we measured
the losses in the Fabry–Perot cavity periodically by
monitoring the storage time for light injected into the
cavity.4 Changes in the absorption and scattering of
the mirrors were inferred from the measured changes
in the storage time.
The authors are with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-
Wave Observatory Project, 102-33 E. Bridge Laboratory, Califor-
nia Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125-0001.
Received 24 January 1994; revised manuscript received 29 July
1994.
0003-6935@95@010183-03$06.00@0.
r 1995 Optical Society of America.We used three test cavities, each in a separate
vacuum chamber. One was used as a control with no
specimen in the chamber, one was exposed to RTV-615
silicone rubber, and one was exposed to Fluorel.
Over several months we noticed little change in the
mirror losses, indicating that these materials may be
used in vacuum systems with low-loss mirrors.
The optical cavities consisted of two 110-ppm 1nomi-
nal2 transmission mirrors. The input mirror was
flat, whereas the other had a 50-cm radius of curva-
ture; both mirrors were 2.5 cm in diameter. They
were held 29.1 cm apart by an aluminum spacer,
which was suspended with 150-µm-diameter wires
for vibration isolation. The entire spacer assembly
was constructed of aluminum except for the steel
wires, stainless-steel screws and balls on which the
mirrors rested, and beryllium–copper springs. The
spacer had a slot where a specimen could be placed
close 1&5 cm2 to the input mirror.
Each vacuum chamber was a 20-cm-diameter, 66-
cm-long tube constructed of stainless steel withKovar-
sealed Pyrex windows at both ends. Before install-
ing the mirrors, the beryllium–copper springs, and
the specimen, we vacuum baked the vacuum chamber
and all other components at 190 °C for 24 h. The
beryllium–copper springs were unavailable at the
time of the initial bake and instead were baked in air
at 200 °C for 48 h. The vacuum chamber was evacu-
ated through a turbomolecular pump 1to reduce poten-
tial backstreaming of pump oil from the rotary vane
roughing pump2. An 8-L@s ion pump attached to the
chamber was started when the chamber pressure
dropped to less than 1025 Torr. After the initial
surge of ion-pump current, an all-metal valve was
used to isolate the chamber from the roughing pump
and the mechanical pumps were removed. In this
way pressures of less than 1028 Torr were achieved
1 January 1995 @ Vol. 34, No. 1 @ APPLIED OPTICS 183
and maintained, except for the chamber containing
Fluorel, which achieved only 2 3 1027 Torr because of
the high outgassing load from the specimen.
The specimens were prepared and handled care-
fully before being inserted into the test chambers.
The fluoroelastomer specimen was a single piece of
3M-Fluorel 2176 170 durometer2 molded into a trun-
cated cone, 5 cm high, 4 cm in diameter at the base,
and 3 cm in diameter at the top. It was cured by the
manufacturer for 25 min at 180 °C and was not
postcured. 1Postcuring is a process that is used to
remove some volatile materials from Fluorel after it is
cured. It is normally usedwithO-rings, for example.2
After we received the part from the manufacturer, we
baked it in vacuum for 46 h at 110 °C.
The RTV specimen consisted of six pieces of RTV-
615 silicone rubber. Each was a cylinder 1 cm in
diameter and 1 cm high. After casting, we soaked
them in methylene chloride for 5 days with the
solvent changed twice. The RTV pieces were then
baked in vacuum for 90 h at 200 °C.
A diagram of the experimental apparatus is shown
in Fig. 1. An argon-ion laser was used as the light
source for the mirror loss measurements. Feedback
to a Pockel’s cell inside the laser cavity locked the
laser frequency to the test cavity modes for times of
the order of 0.1 ms. The feedback loop derived its
error signal from the light reflected from the cavity
with the rf reflection-locking technique.5 When the
light transmitted through the cavity reached a preset
trigger level, an acousto-optic modulator was used to
shut off the light incident on the cavity. At the same
time a storage scope began recording the output of a
photodiode monitoring the light that leaks out of the
cavity. Typically 32 such decay transients were aver-
aged together. The data were then fit to an exponen-
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental apparatus.
184 APPLIED OPTICS @ Vol. 34, No. 1 @ 1 January 1995tial of the form
V 5 A 1 B exp12t@te2. 112
The resulting te is the storage time given by
te .
2l
cLcav
, 122
where l is the length of the cavity, c is the speed of
light, and Lcav is the 1small2 cavity round-trip loss
including absorption and scattering as well as trans-
mission. The light trigger level was set so that only
the storage time of the TEM00 mode was measured.
Ten such measurements 1each representing the aver-
age of 32 decay transients2weremade and averaged to
provide an estimate of the measurement uncertainty.
After the experiments described here were per-
formed, we developed a better method of cleaning
Fluorel that significantly decreased its outgassing.
After being cured, it was postcured by being baked in
air at a temperature that is ramped from 80 to 230 °C
over a period of 46 h. The slow ramp was necessary
to avoid cracking the Fluorel piece. It was then
baked at 230 °C for 14 h. After cooling, the Fluorel
piece was vacuum baked for 10 days at 200 °C.
A plot of total cavity loss versus time for the control
cavity and the two materials tested so far is shown in
Fig. 2. The large differences in the initial losses
arose from spatial nonuniformity of the mirrors. We
repeated the measurements often for the first 48 h to
look for rapid degradation. In all three cases the
losses measured immediately before pumping down
were ,10 ppm higher than losses measured after 1 h
of pumping. This decrease is consistent with the
expected decrease in Rayleigh scattering from the air
in the chamber.
The results of linear fits to the data are shown in
Table 1. We do not necessarily expect a contamina-
tion effect to be linear, but a linear fit is a convenient
way of quantifying trends in the data for comparisons
Fig. 2. Total cavity loss versus time for three test chambers with
straight-line fits. The lengths of the lines indicate the regions
over which the fits were taken.
between the three cavities. Since fluctuations in the
data typically exhibited time scales of several days,
only one point was retained for the fit from the initial
48-h period in the cases of the control cavity and RTV
test cavity. The Fluorel test cavity showed a de-
crease in losses for the first 200 h. There are several
mechanisms that could explain such an effect. For
example, the mirror coating could have absorbed
water or a contaminant film could have formed on the
mirror before evacuation of the chamber, which then
desorbed in vacuum. Whatever the explanation, it
was decided that the most conservative estimate of
mirror degradation caused by exposure to Fluorel
would be obtained by starting the linear fit after the
initial downward trend at 200 h.
In general our short-term measurement uncer-
tainty for te was much smaller than the observed
day-to-day fluctuations in this parameter. We sus-
pect that the larger fluctuations resulted from move-
ment of the spot positions on the mirrors. A small
temperature change in the aluminum spacer could
cause it to bend slightly in addition to changing its
length. Since the waist 1radius2 was 0.2 mm, a small
spot motion would significantly change the total
losses if the mirror losses were not uniform. In fact
mirrors tested from this coating batch typically showed
factor-of-2 variations in losses with position across
the surface of the mirror. Losses measured succes-
sively in a cavity on the TEM00 and TEM01 modes
were observed to differ by 25%, indicating that the
length scale for these loss variations was comparable
with the spot size. We expect that, with the use of
better mirrors in the future, our measurements will
become more accurate.
For comparison with the optical tests, the outgas-
sing properties of identically prepared specimens
were characterized by a residual gas analyzer 1RGA2.
The measurements were carried out in the same
chamber in which the specimens were baked so that
the specimens were not exposed to air between their
baking and our taking the spectra. We calibrated
the outgassing rates by opening a calibrated N2 leak
into the test chamber. 1The calibrated leak itself was
checked against another calibrated leak.2 Table 2
shows the outgassing rates at various mass numbers.
These outgassing rates indicate the successful re-
moval of volatile hydrocarbon residues by the clean-
ing and baking procedure. Note, however, that total
outgassing rates on elastomers prepared in this way
and then exposed to air before installation in a
Table 1. Results of Optical Tests
Specimen
Rate of Increase of Losses 1ppm@week2
Best Fit 95% Confidence Limit
Control 0.13 6 0.07 ,0.24
Fluorel 0.25 6 0.06 ,0.35
RTV 0.16 6 0.08 ,0.29vacuum system are expected to be higher than the
values in Table 2. During exposure to air, gases are
reabsorbed into the elastomers. The pressures in
test chambers that contained elastomers were ob-
served to decrease more slowly than in the control
chamber because of this subsequent outgassing.
This effect was far more prominent in the Fluorel
sample than in the RTV sample, which we attribute to
the lower permeation rate in the Fluorel specimen
and the larger size of that specimen.
Within measurement errors the cavities exposed to
Fluorel or RTV did not show a significantly higher
rate of mirror loss increase than the control cavity.
These materials should be acceptable for use in many
vacuum applications with low-loss mirrors at room
temperature. Although the best linear fit for the
control cavity shows a slight loss increase, we feel
that it is premature to speculate on its cause given our
measurement accuracy. In ongoing experiments we
are attempting to improve the limits set for Fluorel
and RTV and test other materials.
We thank R. Vogt and the entire Laser Interferome-
ter Gravitational-Wave Observatory team for support
and critical discussions. We are especially grateful
to Stan Whitcomb for helpful advice. This research
was supported by the National Science Foundation
cooperative agreement PHY-9210038.
References
1. A. Abramovici, W. E. Althouse, R. W. P. Drever, Y. Gursel, S.
Kawamura, F. J. Raab, D. Shoemaker, L. Sievers, R. E. Spero,
K. S. Thorne, R. E. Vogt, R. Weiss, S. E. Witcomb, and M. E.
Zucker, ‘‘LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory,’’ Science 256, 325–333 119922.
2. J. Giaime, P. Saha, D. Shoemaker, and L. Sievers, ‘‘A passive
vibration isolation stack for LIGO: design, modeling, and
testing,’’ to be submitted to Rev. Sci. Instrum.
3. See, for example, A. P. Glassford, ed., Optical System Contami-
nation: Effects, Measurement, Control, Proc. Soc. Photo-Opt.
Instrum. Eng. 777, 119872; 1329 119902; 1754 119922.
4. D. Z. Anderson, J. C. Frisch, and C. S. Masser, ‘‘Mirror
reflectometer based on optical cavity decay time,’’Appl. Opt. 23,
1238–1245 119842.
5. R. W. P. Drever, J. L. Hall, F. V. Kowalski, J. Hough, G. M. Ford,
A. J. Munley, and H. Ward, ‘‘Laser phase and frequency
stabilization using an optical resonator,’’ Appl. Phys. B 31,
97–105 119832.
Table 2. Results of Residual Gas Analyses
Mass
Effective Outgassing Rates 1Torr L@s cm22
Fluorel
1No Postcure2
Fluorel
1Postcured2 RTV-615
18 1.8 3 1029 8.8 3 10214 ,7.5 3 10214
28 3 3 10210 1.9 3 10212 ,6.9 3 10213
44 8 3 10212 1.6 3 10212 ,9 3 10214
All others ,6.8 3 10211 ,7.3 3 10214 ,3.8 3 10215
RGA electronic
noise level
2.3 3 10215 1.4 3 10216 1.9 3 10216
1 January 1995 @ Vol. 34, No. 1 @ APPLIED OPTICS 185


Measured limits to contamination of optical surfaces by elastomers in vacuum

A passive vibration isolation stack for LIGO: design, modeling, and testing,’’ to be submitted to Rev.

Laser phase and frequency stabilization using an optical resonator,’’

LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory,’’

Mirror reflectometer based on optical cavity decay time,’’Appl.

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Measured limits to contamination of optical surfaces by elastomers in vacuum

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