(393a) Scalable Assembly of Nanoparticle Anti-Reflection Coatings on Geometrically Complex Substrates

Unwanted light reflection from an optical surface, such as automotive dashboards and flat panel displays, could pose safety hazards, impair the legibility of displays, and degrade performance of optical systems with multiple optical components. Here we present a simple, rapid, and scalable bottom-up technology for assembling close-packed silica nanoparticle monolayers on both flat and non-flat substrates as high-quality anti-reflection (AR) coatings. Importantly, this technology enables the fabrication of AR coatings on geometrically complex substrates (e.g., the inner and outer surfaces of a volumetric flask with a long neck) that cannot be AR-treated by conventional vacuum-deposition-based AR techniques. Optical measurements show that monolayer coatings consisting of silica nanoparticles can significantly reduce optical reflectance and enhance specular transmittance of the glass substrate for a broad range of visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Both experiments and numerical simulations based on a rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) model reveal that the anti-reflection properties of the self-assembled colloidal monolayers are significantly affected by the size and the surface coverage of the assembled colloidal nanoparticles.