J Mater Sci Technol ›› 2005, Vol. 21 ›› Issue (06): 883-886.

• Research Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Rain Erosion Behavior of Silicon Dioxide Films Prepared on Sapphire

Liping FENG, Zhengtang LIU,Wenting LIU   

  1. Laboratory of Functional Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
  • Received:2004-12-15 Revised:2005-01-29 Online:2005-11-28 Published:2009-10-10
  • Contact: Liping FENG

Abstract: Silicon dioxide (SiO2) films were prepared on sapphire (α-Al2O3) by radio frequency magnetron reactive sputtering in order to increase both transmission and rain erosion resistant performance of infrared domes of sapphire. Composition and structure of SiO2 films were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The transmittance of uncoated and coated sapphire was measured using a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer. Rain erosion tests of the uncoated and coated sapphire were performed at 211 m/s impact velocity with an exposure time ranging from 1 to 8 min on a whirling arm rig. Results show that the deposited films can greatly increase the transmission of sapphire in mid-wave IR. After rain erosion test, decreases in normalized transmission were less than 1% for designed SiO2 films and the SiO2 coating was strongly bonded to the sapphire substrate. In addition, sapphires coated with SiO2 films had a higher transmittance than uncoated ones after rain erosion.

Key words: Silicon dioxide films, Sapphire, Magnetron reactive sputtering, Rain erosion