  Boron carbide (B4C) is one of the few materials that is expected to be mostly
resilient with respect to the extremely high brilliance of the photon beam
generated by free electron lasers (FELs) and is thus of considerable interest
for optical applications in this field. However, as in the case of many other
optics operated at modern light source facilities, B4C-coated optics are
subject to ubiquitous carbon contaminations. These contaminations represent a
serious issue for the operation of high performance FEL beamlines due to severe
reduction of photon flux, beam coherence, creation of destructive interference,
and scattering losses. A variety of B4C cleaning technologies were developed at
different laboratories with varying success. We present a study regarding the
low-pressure RF plasma cleaning of carbon contaminated B4C test samples via
inductively coupled O2/Ar, H2/Ar, and pure O2 RF plasma produced following
previous studies using the same IBSS GV10x downstream plasma source. Results
regarding the chemistry, morphology as well as other aspects of the B4C optical
coating before and after the plasma cleaning are reported. We conclude from
these comparative plasma processes that pure O2 feedstock plasma only exhibits
the required chemical selectivity for maintaining the integrity of the B4C
optical coating.
