Study on effective laser cleaning method to remove carbon layer from a gold surface

Hydrocarbon cracking and carbon contamination is a common problem in soft x-ray Synchrotron Radiation (SR) beamlines. Carbon contamination on optics is known to absorb and scatter radiation close to the C K-edge (284 eV) spectral region. The purpose of this work is to study and develop a laser cleaning method that can effectively remove the carbon contaminations without damaging the underneath gold-coated optics. The laser cleaning process is a non-contact, accurate, efficient and safe. Nd:YAG laser of 100 ns pulse duration is used for carbon cleaning. The effect of laser pulse duration, laser fluence, number of laser passes, angle of incidence and spot overlapping on the cleaning performance is studied. Cleaning effect and subsequent film quality after laser irradiation is analyzed using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and soft x-ray reflectivity (SXR) techniques.