Coatings for optical applications produced by ion beam sputter deposition

Ion beam sputter deposition (IBSD) is a useful technique for producing high performance optical coatings. It is possible with relatively simple methods to get a reasonable deposition rate over a sufficiently large area. However, thin films produced with this coating method had a relatively high amount of contaminants. The contaminants were analyzed by various techniques mainly by total reflection x-ray fluorescence. The influence of the contaminants on the performance of the optical coatings proved to be surprisingly low. Optical properties were investigated, mainly the refractive index, the absorption coefficient at 0.514 mum, the scattering behavior, and the damage threshold against high-power laser pulses at 1.06 mum.