Large-Area Optics

Vacuum Coating Equipment for Telescope Mirrors & Large Apertures

Are you look­ing for coat­ing so­lu­tions for large op­ti­cal sur­faces with ex­cep­tion­al­ly de­mand­ing re­quire­ments, such as as­tro­no­mi­cal re­flect­ing te­le­scopes, large-area la­ser mir­rors for fu­sion pro­jects, or oth­er ae­ro­space and de­fense ap­pli­ca­tions? Our mag­ne­tron sput­ter­ing, elec­tron-beam evap­o­ra­tion, and ther­mal evap­o­ra­tion tech­nol­o­gies pro­vide the pre­ci­sion you need.

Coat­ing large op­ti­cal sur­faces re­quires ex­cep­tion­al pre­ci­sion. In te­le­scope con­struc­tion, in­di­vid­u­al mir­rors can ex­ceed 26 feet in di­am­e­ter and are pol­ished to a sur­face ac­cu­ra­cy of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 nanome­ters. When de­pos­it­ing high­ly re­flec­tive alu­minum, sil­ver, or gold lay­ers, the coat­ing pro­cess must pre­serve this ac­cu­ra­cy and avoid dis­tort­ing the mir­ror’s ide­al par­a­bol­ic or hy­per­bol­ic shape. In prac­tice, this re­quires nanome­ter-level uni­for­mi­ty across the en­tire sur­face.