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ANTIREFLECTIVE COATINGS

Dielectric stacks for the control of reflections when light transfers from one medium to another (e.g., from air to glass).

Dontech has an extensive array of high energy, vacuum deposition systems for applying thin film antireflection (AR) coatings to various types of glass, plastic, and crystalline substrates. Processes include DC and AC magnetron sputtering and ion enhanced and (IAD) e-beam evaporation.  EZKlean™ brand hydrophobic and oleophobic coatings can be integrated in the VAR™ brand coating designs to minimize fingerprints and to improve the ease with which the surface can be cleaned if contaminated. 

VAR™ coatings are used in applications that require high ambient light readability, such as in avionic cockpit displays, mobile computing, outdoor kiosks, marine environments, and precision optics (e.g., targeting system optics). These coatings provide reflection control without degrading the resolution or quality of the transmitted image. VAR™ coatings accomplish reflection reduction by converting reflected energy into transmitted light.

Our coating abilities range from a simple single layer quarter wave optical layer applied to an optical substrate that reduces some of the specular reflections over a narrow spectrum, to multilayer broad band AR coatings that reduce a very high percentage of the reflections over a wide spectrum and for a broad range of angles.  

Dontech designs and applies VAR™ coatings on both rigid and flexible (R2R and batches) substrates. We customize our coatings for the optical spectrum covering UV, Visible, Near IR, Mid IR through Far IR.  Dontech’s VAR™ coatings provide reflection control properties to a broad range of optical performance standards while also meeting military, medical, and other industry specific durability requirements.

Dontech designs and produces VAR™ coatings to meet the following industry optical, environmental, and quality standards listed below in addition to both internal and custom requirements: 

  • MIL-C-14806 
  • SAE AMS-2521
  • MIL-C-675
  • RTCA DO-160
  • MIL-STD-810 
  • MIL-STD-202
  • MIL-PRF-13830

 

More basic VAR™ films include VAR-0.5, and VAR-0.75 which are commonly used in ground based military, medical, and industrial instrumentation applications. As a general specification, the name indicates an antireflective thin film specular antireflective coating with the average maximum percentage photopic specular surface reflection for normal incident white light (i.e., VAR-0.5 has a maximum total luminous reflection of illuminant D65 of 0.5% maximum). These coatings are commonly provided with an EZKlean™ hydrophobic outer layer.

Dontech’s design team takes into account durability and other application requirements to offer customized solutions.  An example of a higher performance requirement is Dontech’s VAR-0.25 AR coating on glass.

DONTECH & Antireflective Coatings

Dontech has extensive engineering and technical support resources that can assist with your AR coating selection and design needs. Our technical staff have diverse backgrounds relevant to high-performance display and precision optics markets. For many of our top customers, we function as an extension of their engineering departments, supporting projects from concept to final system delivery. We will integrate our optical filters and other enhancing components into touchscreens, displays, and systems to the level that is needed by our customers.

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