New facility for manufacturing and testing very large narrow bandpass filters and other high performance optical coatings

摘要

Optical coatings are key elements of any optical system. They can reduce surface reflection loss, isolate spectral bands, re-direct the light path and split light beams by wavelength. For decades, astronomers have made use of these special characteristics embodied in Anti-Reflection (AR) coatings, Band Pass (BP) filters, mirrors and Dichroic Beamsplitters (DBS). In the last several years, a need has arisen for much larger high performance filters and coatings. This is being driven by the ever increasing size of new and planned telescopes with their correspondingly larger focal planes. Typical Broadband filters require modest wavelength uniformity and can be produced in legacy (existing) coating chambers, even in fairly large formats. However, some new instruments require narrow BP (NBP) filters of 60 cm or greater diameter in order to perform efficiently. Some planned systems will even require filters in the 75 cm diameter range. The implications for coating such large, very expensive optics are that the equipment must not only accommodate a large optic, but the process must achieve excellent uniformity over broad areas. It must also exhibit excellent performance, reproducibility and reliability in depositions consisting of well over one hundred layers and many hours duration. And finally, the spectral performance must be verifiable, not through an indirect method, but directly of the science optic itself. To address these challenges, Materion designed, built, tested and put into production a purpose-built laboratory. This paper will describe in detail the elements of the lab creation and initial achievements.