Historically, it has been extremely
difficult if not impossible to adapt
steel honeycomb optical tops to meet the rigorous requirements of vacuum
chamber applications. Engineers have sacrificed
the rigidity, flatness, damping, and convenience
of optical tops for baked, vacuum compatible machined
structures of aluminum and stainless steel. Until
now.
TMC has combined our inherently clean CleanTop®
design with several new proprietary design
features, cleaning methods, and a vacuum pump-down procedure
developed for the University of Texas’ Petawatt
Laser Project to achieve a level of vacuum
compatibility previously unattainable. Though this new design
does not require baking (and is incompatible
with baking), engineers at University of Texas’ Petawatt
Laser have achieved 8 x 10-7 torr in a 7-foot
diameter, 380 cubic foot chamber containing a 14-foot long
CleanTop Optical Top.
Closely correlated with
their vacuum compatibility is the fact that
these tops only out-gas extremely small amounts ensuring
they do not damage optics (because attaining
the target vacuum level would be of little value if the
top emitted enough contamination to damage
optics). The top for the Petawatt Laser application
was demonstrated to cause less than a 0.1%
loss in optical transmission of a test optic.
We cannot
guarantee precisely what level of vacuum you
will achieve or what ratio of optical transmission
you will maintain. But, we can guarantee that
we will provide you with the same design features,
cleaning methods, and recommended pumping procedures
that assisted the University of Texas’ Petawatt
Laser in attaining a vacuum level of 8 x 10-7
torr and less than 0.1% transmission loss.
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