Focus on Special Features

• Optimization Overview
• Needle Optimization
• Needle/Tunneling Optimization
• Electric Field Intensity
• Sensitivity to Manufacturing Errors
• Layer Sensitivity
• Color Sensitivity
• Biconical Transmittance
• Optical Monitoring
• Determining Refractive Index (N and K)
• Sources of Material Data

Material Data

Accurate data about the optical properties of coating materials is important for designing and manufacturing optical coatings. Because optical properties may depend on the process used to deposit the coating, it is best to measure the refractive index of layers produced by the process.

If you are designing a coating as a proof-of-concept, the accuracy of refractive index data is less important. In this case, you can use material data from published sources and then, after the actual indices have been substituted, the coating design can be optimized again.

There are many sources of material data. Some of the more accessible ones are listed below. If you know of any additional sources of data, please e-mail information to the address given below.

Web:

• The Sopra company, which manufactures ellipsometers to determine the refractive index of materials, recently posted a database containing optical data of more than 200 material files. Original developer, Software Spectra, has converted this data to the format used by TFCalc. For more information, click here.

Books:

• P. Klocek, Editor, Handbook of Infrared Optical Materials, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1991.
• E.D. Palik, Editor, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids, Academic Press, New York, 1985.
• E.D. Palik, Editor, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids II, Academic Press, New York, 1991.
• E.D. Palik and G.K. Ghosh, Editors, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids, Academic Press, New York, 1997.
• L. Ward, The Optical Constants of Bulk Materials and Films, Adam Hilger, 1995.