(66d) Spin-Processing of Colloidal Coatings for Optimum Anti-Reflection Effect

Colloidal anti-reflection (AR) coatings offer a number of distinct advantages over other AR technologies, including low cost, speed, and ease of processing.  In addition, such coatings may be deposited from aqueous solutions, making them an environmentally friendly alternative to techniques utilizing harsher chemicals and more energy-intensive processing methods.  In this talk, I will highlight recent efforts to process colloidal coatings with tunable refractive index and thickness in order to enhance their compatibility with the widest possible range of optical systems and materials.  Our method utilizes an aggregation step, whereby the particles are allowed to agglomerate at a rate controlled precisely by the solution pH and temperature.  In addition to showing promise as a potential technology for conformably coating plastics optics with moderate curvilinear geometries, we demonstrate that colloidal coating processing also offers a unique method of tracking aggregation kinetics via thickness and refractive index measurements of the deposited coatings on silicon substrates.