As an optical thin film engineer you have to understand coating materials. If you don't, a great design is merely theory.

In the old days you could assume that MgF2 and ZnS were the same chamber-to-chamber. Too bad oxides don't behave the same way!

When results fail to meet specifications you have to deduce the type of error: thickness? index? tooling? You need software that goes beyond coating design. You need FilmStar.

After all, your job isn't done when you design a coating, it's just beginning.

FilmStar allows indices to be defined as constants (for initial designs), look-up tables, and built-in (Sellmeier, Cauchy, etc.) or user-defined dispersion functions. The coefficients utilized in these functions can be determined by inverse-synthesis from measured spectral data.

User-defined functions can include multiple n&k look-up tables. As illustrated below, 'My TiO2' is a linear mixture of 'Good TiO2' and 'Bad TiO2'. Please click here for further explanation and additional screen shots.