Thin films and coatings

Coatings at CSL

 

Coating design

• Optical stack simulation 
• Optical performances computation 
• Monitoring strategy 

Coating deposition

The CSL developed vacuum coating facilities and proposed service since the end of the 90’s. Our vacuum techniques allow depositing a large range of thin film materials (metals, dielectrics, conductive oxides, semiconductors, dynamic materials).

• Thermal evaporation
• E-beam evaporation
• Ion Beam Sputtering
• Magnetron sputtering

Non-vacuum techniques:

• Wet coating deposition (spin or dip-coating)
• Laser deposition

Applications: reflectors, anti-reflection, beam splitters, filters, sensing, micro-fabrication, protection, surface smoothing …

CSL has provided coatings for international space missions such as: the James Webb Telescope, Herschel, PROBA, GAIA, Exomars, Solar Orbiter, Chandrayaan 2 ...

Coating qualification (via norms ECSS, ISO, DIN, MIL)

• Thermal vacuum cycling
• Thermal humidity in climatic chamber
• Ageing to UV light
• Adherence
• Abrasion
• Radiation
• Contamination
• Optical measurements (see ‘Surface characterization’ expertise)

            MIRIM mirror (James Webb Telescope)                      Micro-grid supported EUV  transmission membrane filter                                                  

          Beam splitter for the GAIA mission             High solar rejection coating for CFRP optical baffle                   Surface inspection