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Inline coating of optical substrates
Author(s) -
Runkel Steffen,
Hohn Oliver,
Degenhardt Jens,
Roos Björn
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
vakuum in forschung und praxis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1522-2454
pISSN - 0947-076X
DOI - 10.1002/vipr.200790039
Subject(s) - coating , materials science , optical coating , scratch , optics , optoelectronics , nanotechnology , composite material , physics
Abstract Applications of such optical technologies as vision care, digital imaging or data communication play an important role in our daily life. Manipulation of light is mainly done using optical lenses. Besides mineral lenses, transparent plastic materials are increasingly gaining in importance. The optical and mechanical properties of lenses are crucially improved by high‐quality coatings. This includes primarily anti‐reflective coatings to enhance light transmission, hard coats to improve scratch resistance of sensitive plastic substrates and finally clean coats to keep the lenses from catching dust and make cleaning easier. In the following we present modern vacuum coating technologies for the industrial refinement of optical substrates. The focus is on the coating of plastic eyeglass lenses using a revolutionary inline technology. On the one hand, the technology merges all coating steps in a fully automated system, and, on the other hand, enables the flexible combination of different layer stacks necessary for RX‐production of ophthalmic lenses. The coating system OPTICUS gives access to this unique inline technology. The design of the OPTICUS is described in the last chapter.