Extremely High Rate Deposition Of Polymer Multilayer Optical Thin Film Materials

This paper highlights a new technique for extremely high rate deposition of optical dielectric films (vacuum deposition of polymer multilayer thin films). This is a way to produce multilayer optical filters comprised of thousands of layers of either linear or nonlinear optical materials. The technique involves the flash evaporation of an acrylic monomer onto a moving substrate; the monomer is then cured. Acrylic polymers deposited to date are very clear for wavelengths between 0.35 and 2.5 [mu]m; they have extinction coefficients of k[approx]10[sup [minus]7]. Application of electric field during cross linking can polarize (''pole'') the film to greatly enhance the nonlinear optical properties. ''Poling'' films with the polymer multilayer technique offers advantages over conventional approaches, in that the polarization should not decay over time. Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratory is well suited for bringing linear and nonlinear polymer multilayer optical filter technology to manufacturing production status for batch and wide area web applications. 10 figs.