Manufacturers of optical coatings and components

High performance dielectric and metal coatings on a variety of optics

Many applications require surfaces that are highly reflective, and the most common technique for making mirrored surfaces is to vacuum deposit a reflective coating onto a polished surface. The two options for vacuum deposited thin film reflectors are metal mirrors or dielectric mirrors.

Metal mirrors consist of a metallic coating.  However, bare metals scratch easily, so it is common to deposit a dielectric layer over the metal layer to increase durability.  These are referred to as protected metal films (e.g., protected aluminum).  Often a more sophisticated multilayer coating is deposited over the metal film to provide increased reflectivity or otherwise modify the performance of the mirror.  These are referred to as enhanced metal films (e.g., enhanced aluminum).