Laser Surface Treatment of Silica Sol-gel Coating to Produce Nanocrystalline Structure

In this study two methods of laser and furnace sintering are used to prepare nanocrystalline structure of silica sol-gel coating on glass substrate. In laser sintering method, an Nd:YAG pulsed laser with a laser pulse energy of 1 J used to sinter the silica sol-gel coating. To evaluate the surface morphology and microstructural analysis, XRD and SEM were used. The optical properties of coatings were examined by UV/VIS spectroscopy. The results indicated that the laser sintered coating was denser than the furnace sintered coating. No porosity and cracks were detected on the surface of laser sintered coating. Using Scherer mathematical equation, it was shown that the grain size of laser sintered coating is well within nano size range. The uniformity of nanocrystalline structure clearly improved the reflection of incident beam from the laser sintered coating. This was mainly due to increase in grain boundary regions which in turn can cause some the wavelength of the incident beam to be transmitted from silica coatings.