Conformal thin films for curved and freeform optics
Emerging optics, such as those in mobile phone cameras, AR/VR goggles and LiDAR devices, reach the limits of traditional PVD technologies and demand optical coatings with conformality only achievable by ALD.
Coating complex optics made easy. Current optical coating methods are well-established for low cost, tolerable process temperature and high throughput. However, traditional PVD coating technologies lack high conformality, making emerging microstructured, curved and freeform optics difficult to coat. For coating complex optics, ALD provides advantages over PVD, like precise thickness control and uniformity, without sacrificing film performance.
At Beneq, we have optimized conformal optical coating deposition at the intersection of uniformity, batch size and deposition rate. ALD is suitable for all types of optical coatings including:
Antireflective, highly reflective and highly absorbing coatings
Bandpass, bandstop and edge-pass filters
Waveguide cladding, core or strain layers
Transparent conductive oxides
MICRO TO MACROSCALE CONFORMALITY
Uniformity for your strictest design requirements. The conformality of our films makes ALD the ideal process for curved lens and complex optical components. Even large diameter optical domes coated in our batch processes have film non-uniformity across all locations of only 1.2%. ALD makes coating substrates possible across 9 orders of magnitude.
Silicon test structure
Perfectly conformal ALD film stack on silicon test structure. ALD is also commonly used for coating waveguides and custom laser optics.
Curved lenses
With ALD, it is simple and easy to coat highly curved, aspheric lenses with the same reflection or transmission values across the entire surface.
BENEQ P400A
Designed for the perfect balance between uniformity and throughput. Despite a lower deposition rate than PVD, ALD enables you to coat your optics in much larger batches. ALD processes coat entire components conformally, giving you unparalleled uniformity and throughput compared to PVD. The Beneq P400A is optimized at the intersection of uniformity, batch size, and deposition rate to deliver you the highest quality thick films. We provide you with expertise and software to design every individual ALD layer for the best performance in the context of your design constraints.
Beneq C2R™ is the spatial ALD member of our Cluster-compatible equipment family. Beneq C2R takes the Plasma Enhanced ALD (PEALD) process to a fully new level – for the first time, PEALD can be used in high volume manufacturing.
The challenge when coating 3D optics is to deposit the coating with high uniformity over an arbitrary topology in a simple manner. The common techniques used for optical coatings, including magnetron sputtering, evaporation, electron beam evaporation (EBE) and ion beam sputtering (IBS), all so called line-of-sight methods.
In this webinar Sami Sneck, the Business Executive of Beneq showcases examples of conformal and uniform optical coatings on complex 3D objects and more
We did a little research and looked at the list of all customer projects from our Coating Services unit and checked what industrial ALD applications our customers have run on Beneq equipment. These were the 3 most popular industrial ALD applications.
Optical lenses and prisms are used to redirect the light waves, they’re also used to allow a specific light wave to pass through, or to reflect specific wavelengths.
Our complete thin film service concept, Thin as a Service, which we launched last year, has been received well. The customers seem to appreciate the possibility to get a quick proof of concept of new ALD applications with ALD-123 as well as the shorter time to production enabled by our Coating Services.
Earlier we shared examples of industrial use of ALD in moisture barriers. Now we continue with another typical area of ALD applications: Optical coatings.
Earlier today we shared news about the next solution in our spatial ALD equipment family: A new rotary spatial reactor we are developing based on technology we have licensed from Lotus Applied Technology.
One of the main ALD events of the year, the 16th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, ALD2016 Ireland, is approaching. Beneq is a platinum sponsor at the event and we will have lots of activity at the site and around it.
The world is getting thinner. The never-ending quest to miniaturize and digitalize everything while saving our limited resources requires innovative technologies that allow creating ultra-thin reflecting layers, strengthening coatings, nanolaminates and protective barriers in spaces where just a few years ago nobody imagined it would be possible to operate.
