OPTICAL COATINGS

High-throughput spatial ALD and optical NIR filters

Beneq poster presentations from the ALD conference

We had a great time in the ALD2016 Conference in Dublin in July and great conversations in the Beneq ALD Boat Bar that became an instant classic. There were so many great presentations in the conference that you simply couldn’t follow all the tracks and certainly could not stop and discuss all the poster presentations in detail.

In case some of you missed the opportunity to check the three Beneq presentations at the event, we are sharing them here.

We already shared recently Sami’s presentation about how ALD technology enables Beneq’s rugged and transparent Lumineq displays. Through the links in this post, you can download Beneq’s two other presentations from ALD2016: Mikko’s poster about large-area spatial ALD for high-throughput coating applications and Kari’s presentation about ALD-based 3D near-infrared filters.

Large-area sheet-to-sheet spatial ALD system

Beneq is a pioneer in ALD solutions that enable coating of large substrates, and we have also discussed them here in the blog. Beneq’s Mikko Söderlund was showcasing our innovations in this area to the ALD2016 audience.

Our large-area spatial ALD coating equipment has been developed for high-throughput coating applications such as Zn buffer for CIGS solar cells, OLED encapsulation, glass coating, and rear-surface passivation of crystalline solar cells. The new spatial ALD process makes it possible to coat bigger substrates faster and in a more flexible way. The capacity of the new large-area ALD coating equipment really opens doors to new possibilities in industrial-level coating. You can check the latest results of our large-sheet ALD tests from Mikko’s poster.

Download Mikko’s ALD2016 poster to get all the details of the latest spatial ALD pilots with large substrates.

3D near-IR filters and refractive index control

Another Beneq presentation in the event was about our results in challenging optical ALD coatings. Compared to other coating technologies, ALD enables coating of complex 3D surfaces without compromising uniformity and quality. With ALD, it is possible to deposit optical films on inner surfaces of difficult 3D-objects and create optical end-products with curved surfaces and 3D features, even with films in micrometer thickness range.

Beneq’s Kari Härkönen shared in his presentation of the ALD2016 conference a case study about processing of an optical NIR (near infrared) filter structure on the inner wall of a glass cylinder. The optical design of the final end solution required 77 ALD layers of alternating TiO2 and Al2O3 materials (total thickness of which was 5.45 µm). Quite an ALD success story again!

For more information about the work with optical coatings and NIR filters, please download Kari’s poster.

Check out our latest updates on optical coatings!

Contact us