Photonics Dictionary

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) equipment refers to a class of specialized apparatus used in the process of chemical vapor deposition, a technique for depositing thin films of various materials onto...

An optical interference coating, vacuum-deposited on a circular substrate, whose transmission characteristics may be varied by physical rotation.

Coating carried out in a sealed chamber evacuated by a mechanical pump in series with an oil diffusion pump to a pressure less than 10-4 mm of mercury, measured by a vacuum gauge. At such a low...

Ion-beam sputtering (IBS) is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique used for depositing thin films onto substrates. It involves bombarding a target material with a beam of energetic ions,...

A colorless, crystalline compound whose low refractive index (n = 1.38) makes it effective as a lens antireflection coating when deposited by thermal evaporation in a near vacuum. This process...

A type of tubing used to protect optical fiber cables, consisting of a wire spiral of aluminum, galvanized steel or stainless steel, encased in a polyvinyl chloride or silicon rubber coating. These...

Optical manufacturing tools and machinery encompass a wide range of equipment, instruments, and systems used in the fabrication, shaping, finishing, and testing of optical components and systems....

Reactive evaporation refers to a process in thin-film deposition where a material is deposited onto a substrate through evaporation, and chemical reactions take place during or after the evaporation...

A measurement in optical thin-film coating processes whereby the gases remaining in the vacuum chamber after coating are characterized by mass spectroscopy.

A vacuum deposition method in which the coating material (target) is removed from the surface of the coating source (cathode) by ion bombardment and deposited upon the substrates.

Sputtering equipment is machinery used in the process of physical vapor deposition (PVD), specifically sputtering. Sputtering is a method of depositing thin films of material onto a substrate surface...

A sputtering target is a solid material used in the process of physical vapor deposition (PVD), specifically sputtering. Sputtering targets are typically made of metals, metal alloys, or compounds...

Equipment dependent on the effects of a vacuum. The principal applications in optics are in the coating of lenses and substrates and the fabrication of multilayer interference filters.