Nanostructured antireflection coatings for infrared sensors and applications

Abstract

Infrared (IR) technology plays a critical role in a wide range of terrestrial and space applications. IR sensing technologies and systems operating from the near-infrared (NIR) to long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectra are being developed for a variety of defense and commercial system applications. However, the performance of IR systems can be significantly limited by signal losses due to reflections from the IR substrates. Optical coatings with high antireflection (AR) characteristics can overcome this limitation and yield substantial enhancement in IR system performance. Magnolia is actively working on the development and advancement of ultrahigh performance AR coatings for a wide variety of defense and commercial applications. These nanostructured AR coatings have been demonstrated for ultraviolet (UV) to LWIR spectral bands on various substrates. The AR coatings enhance the transmission of light through optical components and devices by significantly minimizing reflection losses, providing substantial improvement over conventional thin film AR coating technologies. Nanostructured AR coatings have been fabricated using a tunable self-assembly process on substrates transparent for a given spectra of interest ranging from the UV to LWIR. The nanostructured multilayer coatings have been designed, developed and optimized for various optoelectronic applications. The optical properties of AR-coated optical and IR components and sensor substrates have been measured and fine-tuned to achieve a high level of performance. In this paper, we review our latest work focusing on high quality nanostructure-based AR coatings, including recent efforts to develop of the nanostructured coatings on IR-transparent substrates.