Design of rectangular gold-coated fused silica gratings with high diffraction efficiency for femtosecond pulse compression

Gold-coated photoresist grating (GCPG) is commonly employed in high-power femtosecond laser systems for its broadband and simple structure. The pyrolysis and low heat conductivity of photoresist substrates are well known to result in a low GCPG laser damage threshold, which restricts the power increase of laser systems. Gold-coated fused silica grating (GCFSG) has a high threshold potential since the grating pattern is transferred from the photoresist to the fused silica substrate by etching. In this paper, a rectangular GCFSG with a period of 1740 l/mm was designed and fabricated. Using rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA), the ideal slot form for GCFSG with high diffraction efficiency was designed. After a comprehensive analysis of the impact of gold plating coating flaws on efficiency, iterations of the coating process were carried out to optimize the slot shape. For these GCFSG samples, magnetron sputtering was used as the gold deposition process and the samples had a bandwidth of at least 150 nm with the -1st-order diffraction efficiency of 93% around the central wavelength of 800 nm. The measured efficiency results were compared with our simulation calculations and good agreement was achieved. After being damaged by lasers, GCFSG can be reused with good economics by being cleaned and then gold-coated.