Optical Monitoring System Enables Greater Accuracy In Thin-Film Coatings

The challenges in achieving greater accuracy in optical thin-film coatings, both historically and in today's coating processes, are many and deserve our scrutiny. The “old” way of designing and manufacturing coatings was to use a thin-film design software like TFCalc, which included analysis, optimization, results, optical data, and coating files. In this instance, one would create a design using high-, medium-, and low-index materials to come up with a theoretical design (Figure 1). The design of the coatings would be the easy part; the hard part comes in replicating the design thickness and the material indexes inside the coating chamber each and every time.