Abstract

Compared to the breathtaking evolution of new coating technologies in the semiconductor industry in the last few years, developments in the field of optical interference coatings have been extremely modest. Classical thermal evaporation methods are still by far the most widely used for the large scale production of optical coatings. "Automation: The Optical Coating Revolution", to quote a recent publication¹, is just about now having its first impact in the industry. Apart from control of the layer thickness, any automatic system must cope with the control and reproducibility of an inherent nonideal film structure^2,3.

© 1984 Optical Society of America