1992 Volume 20 Issue 1 Pages 11-19
Electron beam-pumped rare gas excimer lasers are capable of producing intense coherent light in the vacuum-ultraviolet region. Their photons were found to modify the surface of SiO2. The modified surfaces were measured by means of a surface profiler, reflectance and transmission spectra, atomic force microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The surfaces were modified when they were used as a cavity reflector for argon and krypton excimer lasers. Silicon was found to be enriched in the surface layers exposed to 9.8 eV photons from an argon excimer laser, but not by krypton excimer laser photons of 8.5 eV. The argon excimer laser photons, surmount-ing the fundamental band gap of SiO2, 9 eV, are assumed to create high-density excitons that induce Si-O bond breaking, resulting in silicon enrichment and oxygen desorption.
