Plasma Optik

Plasma Optik designs and manufactures custom thin film optical interference coatings utilizing an ion beam sputtering (IBS) process. Our IBS chambers were built and designed by Plasma Process Group and have proprietary technological advantages over other commercially available IBS tools. The three target materials have an extremely stable deposition plume. Our chambers use a broadband optical monitoring capability (350nm to 1000nm) which provides +/-0.1nm precision. Consequently, our systems have superior run-to-run repeatability. Why Use IBS? Ion beam sputtered films have been used by industry since the 1980s. The ion beam sputtering process produces thin film coatings with superior adhesion and densification compared with other technologies. IBS films are environmentally stable over temperature ranges -50C to 350C (and in some cases 900C) and exhibit low wavelength shifting. The low temperature process (less than 90C) produces thin films that exhibit low absorption and very low scatter loss. The ion beam is electronically controlled so the thin film layer growth can be adjusted at the Angstrom level. The most demanding thin film applications, such as telecom filters, rely on IBS. Design Expertise Our team has many years of experience designing and developing thin film optical coatings. We use Essential Macleod thin film software with the statistical modeling design module to ensure predictable fabrication. Our specialties include group delay dispersion (GDD) and high laser damage threshold (LDT) optical designs with an emphasis in the challenging UV environment. Have a look at our technical papers on the web site for more details. Coating Capabilities Our portfolio of coating work includes Bandpass, Blocking, and Notch Filters. We can do coatings with OD6 blocking capability and 99.999% reflectivity. We have fabricated Broadband AR coatings, Gain Flattening, and Beam Splitters just to name a few!