Abstract

In recent years, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has found increasingly numerous practical applications, particularly in the microelectronics industry. Specific examples include the commercialized silicon nitride deposition reactors for metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) device passivation and dielectric isolation, and the experimental silane reactors various workers have constructed to research the potential of plasma-deposited amorphous silicon thin films. However, with the exception of rugate filters, relatively little work has been done on fabrication of optical interference coatings by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques of any sort. This paper describes a plasma-enhanced CVD technique designed specifically for just this application, i.e., optical interference coating fabrication. Moreover, as will be described in more detail, it is a technique particularly well-suited for coating plastic substrates with complex coatings, which has always been a challenging coating problem.

© 1984 Optical Society of America