Abstract

Most experienced coating facilities have a collection of coating designs that were successfully coated in the past. These designs can be shifted in wavelength and corrected for dispersion, or shifted in design angle to satisfy different requirements. In many cases, a new design may be necessary to achieve the required goals. Although there are a limited number of useable coating materials that can be used in a specific wavelength region, there usually exists several coating designs, not all of which are practical, to satisfy a given coating requirement. Thin film optimization computer programs are used to obtain a final design from the first order design by taking account of dispersion, absorption, etc. Optimization programs usually "home in" on the nearest solution to the starting design that satisfies the requirements. The first order calculations play a central role in coating design and determine the direction for optimization. This paper attempts to cover some methods of first order coating designs that can later be optimized by trial and error, or with an optimization program.

© 1982 Optical Society of America