Optical Bonding
Our patented adhesive-free bonding process, Hy-Per Bond™, overcomes issues such as beam distortion and performance degradation resulting from the outgassing of optical cement.
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Optical Coatings
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Operating five facilities with thin-film optical coating capabilities: three in the US and two in the UK; each with multiple chambers, we offer customers temperature stable optical coatings to meet high laser damage thresholds at short pulse lengths across the bandwidth of commercial laser wavelengths from deep UV through to the far IR.
Our expertise in optical coating has been supported by investment in custom-built, ultra-clean, high repeatability chambers to meet customers’ evolving needs for environmentally-stable optical coatings.
Our engineers are continuously researching the performance characteristics of new coating materials and integrating the results into our modeling software to optimize the designs for customers’ applications.
Our comprehensive range of optical coating techniques:
- Thermal evaporation
- Electron-beam (e-beam)
- Ion assisted deposition (IAD)
- Ion beam sputtering (IBS)
- Chemical vapor for diamond-like coatings (DLC)
We use thermal evaporation for the deposition of metals and dielectrics which are less compatible with e-beam coating. For the many materials that are compatible, however, the e-beam technique provides coating with lower stress where surface flatness is a priority, higher laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT), and improved control of impurities in the deposited material.
E-beam is especially useful for coating components for operation at deep ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths.
Ion-assisted electron beam (IAD) coating deposits robust coatings with very high laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) and very low thermal shift.
IAD coatings are widely utilized for optical systems designed for the defense industry where multiple laser wavelength devices are required to work together in rugged environments.
Ion beam sputtering (IBS) generates very dense, hard coatings ideal for very high reflection and low loss requirements. IBS is thus well-suited to finishing superpolished mirrors – whether for cutting-edge research or for Ring Laser Gyros (RLG). IBS coatings have a lower LIDT than IAD coatings. to work together in rugged environments.
A chamber that incorporates thermal, e-beam, and an ion source provides increased coating flexibility. This enables us to tune and allow selective bombardment of the various coating materials during deposition to match challenging substrate types and meet exacting performance requirements.
Contact us to discuss your optical coating needs.
| Deposition technology | Coating types |
|---|---|
| Chemical vapor | Diamond-like coating (DLC) |
| Thermal evaporation | Metallic |
| Electron beam gun evaporation (e-beam) | High-reflection (HR) | Anti-reflection (AR) | V-coats, double-V coats | Broadband AR |
| Ion assisted e-beam deposition (IAD) | High-reflection (HR) | Anti-reflection (AR) | V-coats, double-V coats | Broadband AR | Bandpass filters (high and low) |
| Ion beam sputtering (IBS) | Dielectric mirrors | High-reflection (HR) |
Quality control process
As part of the quality control process, we test our coated optics using the following processes:
- Temperature cycling, adhesion, abrasion, and humidity testing to ISO and MIL standards.
- Transmission and reflection measurements made using spectrophotometers with wavelengths from 185 nm to 28 μm.
- Capability to measure coatings at various AOI (up to 85°) from 185 nm to 26000 nm in S and P polarization.
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