Method of cleaving a thin sapphire layer from a bulk material by implanting a plurality of particles and performing a controlled cleaving process

A method comprising:

• forming a coating on an external surface of a bulk single crystal material;
• implanting a plurality of particles into a surface of a bulk single crystal material at between 650-850° C. to form a cleave region, such that the coating performs radiative cooling;
• and
• performing a controlled cleaving process to separate a cleaved single crystal layer from the bulk single crystal material along the cleave region,
• wherein the bulk single crystal material comprises sapphire, and the cleaved single crystal layer comprises a cleaved single crystal sapphire layer having a thickness of between 5-100 μm;
• wherein the implanting comprises accelerating protons from a particle accelerator into the surface of the bulk single crystal sapphire material to form a sub-surface cleave region, and
• performing the controlled cleaving comprises applying energy in a spatially varying manner to cause controlled cleaving of the bulk single crystal sapphire material propagated in a direction along the sub-surface cleave region to produce a cleaved single crystal sapphire layer with a Total Thickness Variation (TTV) on the order of +/−0.02 μm;
• providing the cleaved single crystal sapphire layer without additional polishing steps;
• providing a quartz optical blank;
• providing an index matching material positioned between the cleaved single crystal sapphire layer and the optical blank to form an optical laminate, an internal reflection at a quartz/sapphire interface being below 1%;
• providing a quarter-wave matching coating to further reduce the internal reflection;
• and
• disposing a second index matching material on an opposite side of the optical blank from the cleaved single crystal sapphire layer, between the optical blank and a second cleaved single crystal sapphire layer.