Study of High Transmittance of SiO2/Nb2O5 Multilayer Thin Films Deposited by Plasma-Assisted Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films were designed for the special application of an aviation lighting system emitting green light. For optical components in this system to meet requirements such as a high transmittance and durability, SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films of 60 individual layers were fabricated by a plasma-assisted reactive magnetron sputtering method. As a result, the transmittance spectra were confirmed to have a flat top surface and a square bandwidth. The transmittances of the SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films in the range of 500 nm to 550 nm was approximately 96.14%. The reason for high transmittance was attributed to the almost matching between the designed and fabricated SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films. It was found that there was little difference in the total thickness between the designed and fabricated SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films without interlayer diffusion. The surface roughness and hardness of the SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films on a glass substrate was 2.32 nm ± 0.19 nm and 6.6 GPa, respectively. These results indicate that SiO2/Nb2O5 multilayer thin films can be applied not only to the optical filters used in aviation lighting devices, but also to various optics applications because of high transmittance.