Some Current

Applications of
Optical Coatings

Angus Macleod
Thin Film Center Inc
2745 E Via Rotonda
Tucson, AZ 85616-5227, USA
 Optical Coatings
Thin-film optical coatings use a combination of controlled
interference and material properties to engineer the specular
behavior of optical surfaces without affecting their power.

Incident Reflected

Coating
Surface

Transmitted
 Optical admittance
The optical admittance of a surface tells us how easy or
hard it is for light to pass through it. If we know the optical
admittance we can calculate the reflectance.

y0 − Y
2

y0=Incident Reflectance R =
y0 + Y
medium
admittance
Y=Surface
admittance

The optical admittance of a material is numerically equal to

its refractive index.
 Interference in a Transparent Layer
The phase change in
the double traversal of
the film determines
the reflectance

Zero thickness and a whole number

Film of halfwaves give the reflectance of
the uncoated substrate. An opposite
interference condition corresponds
Substrate to an odd number of quarterwaves.
 Basic Design Principles
Quarterwave layers give maximum interference effect

Halfwave layers are absentee layers - they have no effect

Dielectric layers become weaker with increasing wavelength

Metal layers become stronger with increasing wavelength

D6
 The Quarterwave Rule
A quarterwave layer transforms the admittance of a surface
following the rule:
y 2film
y transformed =
y surface
A quarterwave stack with x layers of H and (x-1) of L:
y0 | HLHLH… ..LH | ysub
has reflectance:
LM y − y 2x
H OP 2

R=M PP
0 2 x −1
y L y sub

MM y + y 2x
H
PQ
N y
0 2 x −1
L y sub

D16
The Quarterwave Stack is a Basic Building Block
23-layer quarterwave stack centered on 800nm
Ripple
Quarterwave stack for 800nm
100
Notch filter
80
Transmittance (%)
60

40

20

0
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Long-wave pass
or dichroic filter
Short-wave pass Wavelength (nm)
or dichroic filter
High reflectance

The ripple is usually removed by adding several layers at

either end and refining them into a matching structure.
D17
 Thin-Film Cavities
1 (blue), 2 (red) and 3 (green) cavity filters
100 A simple cavity consists of
Three-cavity a halfwave layer surrounded
Transmittance (%)

80
by two reflectors.
60
Two-cavity
HLHLHLHLHL HH LHLHLHLHLH
40 Single-cavity
20 This gives a narrow band of
0 transmission.
990 995 1000 1005 1010
Wavelength (nm)
Better passband shape can be achieved by coupling cavities
into multiple-cavity filters.

Two-cavity: HLHLHLHLHL HH LHLHLHLHLH L

HLHLHLHLHL HH LHLHLHLHLH

D08
 Induced Transmission in a Metal Film
An antireflection coating entirely of dielectric materials consisting
of a phase matching layer and suitable reflector on either side of a
metal film can induce high transmission over a limited spectral
region. Elsewhere the metal assures high reflectance. The greater
the reflectance the thicker the metal and the narrower the pass
region. Here two silver-based filters are shown.
DMD: Transmittance Induced transmission filter
100 100

80
Transmittance (%)

80

Transmittance (%)
60 60

40 40
HAgH HLHLHLAgLHLHLH
20 20

0 0
300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100
400 600 800 1000
Wavelength (nm) Wavelength (nm)

D11
 Magnesium Fluoride Antireflection Coating
MgF2 on glass
5
Reflectance
4 of glass

Reflectance (%)
3
2

c h
1.26% 2
1
. − 138
100 . 2
152
.
R=
c100 . h
0
2
0 1 2 3
Quarterwaves
4 5
. + 138
. 2
152

5
MgF2 on glass
= 126%
.
4 We make this film a
Reflectance (%)

3 quarterwave at 510nm,
Blue Red then it is 1.275
2

1
quarterwaves at 400nm
Green and 0.725 quarterwaves
0
400 450 500 550 600 650 700 at 700nm
Wavelength (nm)

AR12
 Two-Layer Antireflection Coating
The reflectance can be reduced to zero or near zero by using
two materials. The quarterwave rule shows that a quarterwave
of Al2O3 (n = 1.65) on glass (n = 1.52) followed by a further
quarterwave of MgF2 (n = 1.38) will give a reflectance of
0.094%.
Single and double-layer 1.00
5
1.38
1.65
4
Reflectance (%)

1.52

c h
3 2
1.00 − 138
. 2
× 152
. 165
. 2
2 R=
1
Single layer for comparison
c1.00 + 138
. 2
× 152 . h
. 1652
2

0
= 0.094%
400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Wavelength (nm)

AR5
 Halfwave Flattening Layer
If we put a halfwave layer into the two-layer design it will
not change the 0.094% but might make the characteristic
broader. Trial and error finds that a halfwave of high index
in between the existing two layers is very satisfactory. Here
we use an index of 2.15 similar to ZrO2 . Quarterwaves
1.00
Inserted 1.38
halfwave
Two and three-layer
2.15
5
1.65
4
Reflectance (%)

1.52
3

1
This is the quarter-
0
half-quarter coating
400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Wavelength (nm)

AR11
 Replacing the Intermediate Index Quarterwave
A thin layer of high index followed by a thin layer of low index can make b=0
and so, with correct thicknesses, can replace a quarterwave of intermediate
index. We can conveniently use the existing high and low index for this.
1.00 2.15
1.00
1.38 1.38 1.38
1.65
2.15 1.38
1.52 1.52

Two and four-layer

Two-layer
1.52
5
Four-layer
4
Reflectance (%)

2 The two-layer
1
coating is known as
the V-coat
0
400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Wavelength (nm)

AR1
Antireflection Coatings for Plastic Spectacle Lenses
The plastic material is soft and the lens is first treated with a
hard coat to strengthen it against abrasion. This is often an
acrylic resin deposited as a liquid and cured by ultraviolet
light. This is followed by a conventional antireflection coating
often of the four-layer type. Finally a very thin hydrophobic
treatment consisting often of a fluorinated hydrocarbon
polymer is added to inhibit soiling. This must be thin to avoid
degrading the antireflection performance.

Anti-smudge coat
Antireflection coating
Hard coat
Lens
AR8
 Antireflection Coating for Plastic
- a New Type
Dr Ulrike Schulz of
the Fraunhofer
Ta2O5
Institute, Jena, has
invented this new
type of antireflection 2.5µm
coating that is largely
a very thick layer of
silica with inserted SiO2
extremely thin layers
of tantala and has Plastic substrate
unprecedentedly high
abrasion resistance.
 Antireflection Coating for Plastic
- a New Type

The performance of a
typical coating of this
new type is shown.
Color, which is
important for spectacle
lenses, can be
introduced by varying
the details of the
design.
 Antireflection Coating for Plastic
- a New Type
We can understand
the performance of
the coating by
splitting it into a
series of units
composed of a thin
high-index layer
surrounded by equal
thick low-index
layers. These units
are equivalent to a series of three-quarter wave layers with
admittance gradually descending from that of the substrate to
that of the incident medium.
 Optical Coatings in Display Systems
Source Dichroic
beam splitters
p and s Liquid crystal
light valve on
silicon (LCOS)
p s
Polarizing
Screen beam splitter

Color Projection CRT Monitor

Display
Anti-glare and
electromagnetic screening
 Glare Reduction Filters
Visual display units suffer from specularly reflected glare.
We can reduce the glare by placing an absorbing filter
treated to have low reflectance in front of the unit. The
glare light must traverse the filter twice while the signal
light traverses it only once. A transmittance on one pass is
normally around 50%. The brightness of the display is
increased to compensate.

Glare Glare

Signal Phosphor Signal Phosphor

Unfiltered Filtered

AR09
 Glare Reduction Coatings
A recent development is the application of the glare reducing
component directly over the face of the visual display unit. The
component consists of an antireflection coating that must also be
absorbing. This is commonly achieved with a four-layer
antireflection coating in which the high index layers are
constructed from partially absorbing material often a doped oxide
such as indium tin oxide (ITO). Since the ITO is a conducting
material it also adds an element of screening of electromagnetic
radiation.
SiO2 ITO

Glass
Phosphor
AR10
Two-Layer Coating for Glare Reduction
Oyama, Takuji and Yoshihito Katayama. Asahi Glass Company,
Ltd, Tokyo, Japan. Light absorptive antireflector. 1997. USA.
Patent 5,691,044.
Hiro Ishikawa and Barret Lippey. Two layer broad band
antireflection coating. in Tenth International Conference on
Vacuum Web Coating. 1996. Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Bakish
Materials Corporation, POB 148, Englewood, NJ 07631, USA.
p. 221-233.
Zheng, Yanfei, Kazuo Kikuchi, Masafumi Yamasaki,
Kenichirou Sonoi, and Kazuhiro Uehara, Two-layer wideband
antireflection coating with an absorbing layer. Applied Optics,
1997. 36(25): p. 6335-6339.

AR03
 Two-Layer Coating for Glare Reduction
The principal necessary feature of the absorbing layer is a k-value
increasing with wavelength. Two different measurements (red and
blue quoted by Ishikawa and Lippey) are shown at the left and the
corresponding optimized performance at the right.
TiNxWy - n and k measurements. Ishikawa-Lippey Coating
3.0 5
n1
2.5
4

Reflectance (%)
2.0
SiO2 (~80nm)
n2
n and k

3
1.5
2
1.0 k1 TiNxWy
0.5 1
k2
0.0 0
400 450 500 550 600 650 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Wavelength (nm) Wavelength (nm)
AR04
Interference
Color
The picture is a
photograph of
transmission color
fringes in a layer
of polystyrene, of
randomly varying
thickness,
surrounded by two
semi-transparent
silver layers
deposited on a
glass substrate.
 Antireflection of a Metal Film
The reflector is adjusted so that
Reflector the two beams are of equal
Dielectric phase amplitude. The phase matching
matching layer
layer is then adjusted in
Metal layer thickness to assure destructive
interference.
Al/MgF2/Cr. 0° Magenta. 45° green.
100
If no transmittance is required 80

Reflectance (%)
then a simple two-layer
60
coating of a dielectric and
40
metal can antireflect, for
20
example, aluminum, to give
0
intensely colorful effects. 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Wavelength (nm)

R.W. Phillips and A.F. Bleikolm, Appl. Opt.

35(28), pp. 5529-5534, 1996.
AR13
 Rejection Filter from Quarterwave Stack
Design3: Index Profile
The characteristic of the 2.7

quarterwave stack exhibits 2.4

Refractive Index
2.1
unwanted higher-order 1.8
reflection bands. The 1.5
profile of index through 1.2

the stack shows that 0.9

-0.9 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.7 3.6 4.5
beams reflected from all Optical Distance from Medium
interfaces cause the higher 100
Design3: Reflectance

order reflection bands. 80

Since the problem is
Reflectance(%)
60
distributed so must be the
40
solution.
20
g is a dimensionless
parameter λ0 / λ 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
g (dimensionless)

RUG2
 A Rugate Structure
Design4: Index Profile
2.7

We now insert at each of 2.4

Refractive Index
2.1
the interfaces a graded
1.8
index antireflection layer, 1.5
one quarterwave thick at 1.2
the reference wavelength, 0.9
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5
g=1. The interfering beams Optical Distance from Medium
are suppressed for all Design4: Reflectance
100
values of g greater than 2.
80
Only the fundamental high-
Reflectance (%) 60
reflectance band remains.
40
The term rugate is applied
20
to the cyclic index profile.
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
g (dimensionless)

RUG4
 Multiple-line rugate filter
RUGATE: Index Profile
2.4 The design of a rugate filter to reject
five separate lines in the 400-1200nm
2.1
region is shown at the left. The
Refractive Index

1.8 calculated performance is plotted

below.
RUGATE: Transmittance
1.5 100

1.2 80

Transmittance (%)
0.9 60
-20 0 20 40 60 80 100
Optical Distance from Medium
40

The red curve represents the raw

design based purely on sine 20

wave distributions. The black is 0

an apodized design. 400 600 800 1000 1200
Wavelength (nm)

RUG8
Surface Plasmon Resonance
Light is totally reflected at an internal
Glass surface of glass if the angle of incidence
is high enough.
Air

Metal Light is strongly reflected by a metal of

high optical quality and discouraged
Air from penetrating into the metal.

We can put these two together. A

Glass surface wave can be guided along the
outer metal surface. Energy can be fed
Metal into this wave from an incident p-
Air
polarized wave in the prism.

SP11
 Surface Plasmon Resonance
Surface plasmon resonance
100
80

Reflectance (%)
p-polarized Prism 60
40
20
0
Silver 41 42 43 44 45
Incident Angle (deg)

Provided the metal film is of suitable thickness, the p-reflectance

of the internal surface of a metal-coated prism exhibits a deep and
narrow minimum. This dip, shown at 632.8nm for a glass prism
coated by 50nm of silver, is known as a Surface Plasmon
Resonance. It is a very sensitive function of conditions at the outer
surface of the metal.

SP16
 Surface Plasmon Resonance Detector
Small amounts of
p-polarized Prism
material can be detected
as a resonance shift.
Wavelength 632.8nm.
Silver layer 54nm thick Sample Silver
(0.067-i4.05). Incident
Plasmon resonance
medium glass (1.52). 100
Emergent medium water 80
(1.33). Leftmost curve
undisturbed resonance. p-Reflectance (%) 60

40
Middle curve 1nm of
1.50. Rightmost 1nm of 20

2.0. 0
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
Incident Angle (deg)

SP17
Membrane Proteins and Signalling Pathways
The binding of the Membrane protein

two proteins induces Lipid bilayer

changes in the
structure of the
membrane protein
that result in a signal
across the cell
membrane. The
surface plasmon Hydrophilic
detector assists in
Lipid
the study of such Protein
processes Hydrophobic

SP13
Plasmon Resonance Detector for Membrane Processes
A lipid bilayer deposited on the surface of the silver has
membrane proteins introduced. Changes in these
proteins and their Glass prism
binding with
molecules from the Detector
Laser
surrounding beam
medium can be
recorded in real
Silver film
time. This is PTFE
important in the
study of signaling
and cellular Aqueous Lipid bilayer
compartment
pathways.
Protein
Rotary table

SP12
 Some Results of Measurements on Rhodopsin
Rhodopsin, a visual
photoreceptor pigment in the disk
membranes of the rod outer
segments of the retina, functions
as a signal transducer converting
light into a nerve impulse that is
mediated by the binding of a G
protein. Absorption of a visible
photon (498nm) causes changes
including a transition from
metarhodopsin I to
metarhodopsin II exposing a
1. Before exposure.
recognition site for the G protein.
2. After flashing.
3. Shift due to binding.

Salamon, Z, Y Wang, M F Brown, H A Macleod, and G Tollin. Conformational changes in rhodopsin

probed by surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy. Biochemistry 33 (1994): 13706-13711
 Contamination by Cigarette Smoke
p-reflectance of smoke contaminated Ag
100

The figure shows

p-polarized Reflectance (%)

the effect of a puff 80

of cigarette smoke
60
on a surface
plasmon resonance. 40
The contamination
is essentially a 5nm 20

thick film of tar.

0
42.0 42.5 43.0 43.5 44.0 44.5
Incident Angle

SP2
 Transient Response
Gaussian light pulse t2
Because the effects are linear we
can decompose a short pulse
1.2
0.8 F t = Aeaf −
2µ 2

Disturbance
into its spectral components and 0.4
follow these separately through 0.0
the system. Their phase -0.4

relationship is critically -0.8

-1.2
important. An undistorted pulse -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60
requires a coincidence of phase Time or distance
through all the components. The phase is affected by
transmission through or reflection from an optical coating.

We can express the condition in terms of a Taylor series

expansion of the phase of an arbitrary component in terms of ∆ω,
the difference in phase between the component and the carrier.
 Transient Response
The most significant terms involve the first three derivatives.
They are given special names:

dϕ
Group Delay (GD) = − (units of time)
dω
d 2ϕ
Group Delay Dispersion (GDD) = − (units of time 2
)
dω 2

d 3ϕ
Third Order Dispersion (TOD ) = − (units of time3
)
dω 3

Note the negative signs. Group Delay simply advances or delays

the pulse arrival. The others distort the pulse shape.
 Transient Response - Pulse
Broadening and Chirping
The Group Delay Dispersion broadens the pulse following the
relationship:
1
 GDD 2 2
τ new = τ old 1 + 
 µ 4


where 2µ is the width of the pulse at the 1/e power points.

As long as GDD is less than µ2 there is little effect but the effect
increases rapidly with GDD if it should exceed µ2.

An accompanying effect is known as chirping. The carrier

frequency varies through the length of the pulse.
 Transient Response

Resonator Reflector

In a system consisting of a Group

resonator over a reflector, the Delay
reflected light enters the
resonator and takes time to
emerge so that there is a delay.
The greatest delay is at the
resonant wavelength.
Wavelength
Extended Zone High Reflectance Coating

The quarterwave stack has a

limited region over which it
yields high reflectance. For
wider high-reflectance
regions several quarterwave
stacks of different central
wavelengths are often used
together. This extended-zone
reflector is constructed from
two quarterwave stacks with
transition and outermost layers refined to improve performance.
There are 31 layers of SiO2 and TiO2 in total
 Transient Response
The electric field
distribution in the extended
zone high reflectance
coating at a wavelength of
560nm. The incident
irradiance is 1Wm-2. Note
the considerable
magnification of the electric
field in the structure at the
front (left) of the coating. This is typical of a resonant structure.
We can therefore expect large Group Delay at the corresponding
wavelength.
 Transient Response
The Group Delay shows the
expected peaks which when
differentiated yield typical
Group Delay Dispersion.

A 10 fs pulse with carrier

500nm has spectral width of
roughly 100nm. The square
of the half pulse width is,
therefore, 25 fs2.
 Correction of Dispersive Effects

All propagation through devices involves dispersive terms that

are properties of the propagation path of the pulse, material, fiber
etc. Coatings can be designed to oppose and correct such effects
of the propagation path.

Also a short pulse can be artificially chirped by passing it

through an electro-optical modulator without affecting its width
and then a correctly designed coating can be arranged to correct
for the chirping and an accompanying broadening (that never
took place) thus shortening the pulse.
 Coating Design
CHIRPED: Reflectance Group Delay Dispersion
For appreciable Group Delay 0

Reflectance GDD (fs^2)

Dispersion the penetration depth of -10
the light must vary rapidly with
-20
wavelength implying a tapered
-30
construction. Much use is made of
computer refinement and synthesis. -40
The example shows a 23-layer 750- -50
900nm reflector with GDD -30fs2 . 700 750 800 850 900 950
Wavelength (nm)
CHIRPED: Index Profile CHIRPED: Reflectance
2.4 100

2.1 80
Refractive Index

Reflectance (%)
1.8 60

1.5 40

1.2 20

0.9 0
-2 0 2 4 6 8 700 750 800 850 900 950
Optical Distance from Medium Wavelength (nm)
UF9