Optical Coating


 

Optical Coating

 

The first single-layer antireflection coating was deposited by Alexander Smakula in 1935 – more than 80 years ago. Since then, optical coatings have spread rapidly in a wide range of industries and various new coating technologies have been developed.

With each development step, the industries are increasing their requirements – calling for coating designs with increasing complexity and ever closer tolerances.

For applications that have been produced with traditional coating technologies just a few years ago, much more sophisticated stack designs are now required. Life sciences, biotech, security &defense as well as laser optics industries are just a few examples. All these industries today place demands on the optical coatings, which can only be met by the latest coating technologies such as sputtering.

Knowing about the continuously increasing demands of precision optics, Solayer has addressed these challenges and developed a wide range of optical coating tools. This portfolio consists of equipment for the sputtering of large-area antireflection coatings all the way up to high-end equipment for precision optics.

Using sputtering technology, the equipment is capable to produce:

  • Dielectric coatings (intrinsic and mixed materials)
  • Transparent conductive (TCO) coatings
  • Metallic coatings

Optical films produced by trend-setting sputtering technologies show out-performing properties, in particular in the VIS and NIR spectral range.

Sputtered films are characterized by an amorphous structure, high density, low defect and mechanical stability resulting in superior environmental resistance and minimal optical losses (absorption and scattering).  >>> read more about optical sputtering     

The existing material diversity offers a comprehensive range of optical films for dielectric and enhanced metallic/dielectric stack design for a cost-effective production of:

  • Filters
  • Mirrors
  • Windows
  • Polarizers
  • Beam splitters
  • Antireflective coatings

All Solayer equipment are based on a load lock type coater design. The resulting production output improvement is not the most important advantage. Even more important is the unique possibility of keeping the process chamber under vacuum during loading and unloading. Taking into account the larger material reservoir of sputtering compared to evaporation or IAD, the process chamber can be kept under vacuum for several weeks. This results in an excellent stable and reproducible coating process.

Another special advantage is the use of Solayer’s proprietary components, which have been specially developed and qualified for use in the optical industry.The exact match of tool design, proprietary key components and deposition process results in a unique production solution.

We work closely with our customers to find a cost-effective solution for their requirements, needs and wishes.Our expertise is the customer-oriented configuration of our systems tailor-made to your individual process and production requirements.

AVIOR M-300  
A unique high-end production equipment. Using advanced reactive assist sputtering this tool is suited for mass production of sophisticated coating designs. 
>>> read more

AVIOR S-100
An all-in-one plug & coat production equipment. Perfectly suited for small production lots as well as for market entry into sputter coated optical films.
>>> read more  

ALASCO O-200
A universal modular equipment platform. This modular configurable platform is ideal for R&D and production of cutting-edge optical coating designs. 
>>> read more

ALIOTH platform
A versatile inline production equipment. Qualified for a wide field of applications ranging from large quantities of small substrates to single large-area substrates. 
>>> read more