Coatings Articles

What are thin-film coatings? The purpose of any optical thin-film coating is to modify the transmittance and reflectance properties of the substrate material to which they are applied. Most coatings...

The common polycrystalline materials used for optical thin-film materials do not satisfy the requirements of telecommunications because of the instabilities caused by moisture absorption in their...

With a specific gravity of 1.85 g/cm3, beryllium is the lightest metal that is workable. It is 45 percent lighter than aluminum and approximately five times as stiff. Its stiffness to weight ratio...

An optical coating engineer is frequently confronted with a difficult specification for a coating. Often the difficulty in the specification results from the particular form of the optical system. If...

Lenses come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. They can be made of a single piece of glass or have multiple elements; their surfaces can be spherical, aspheric or cylindrical; they can be...