Silver based mirrors (Ag-mirrors) boast high reflectivity in the visible spectral range and low emissivity in the thermal infrared, but tend to suffer from low durability; requiring regular recoating. Conventional coatings extend the operational life of Ag-mirrors, but significantly reduce the mirror’s efficacy in the blue-UV spectral range. The solution our study proposes is a protective coating of diamond-like carbon (DLC); known for its hydrophobicity and abrasion resistance. DLC coating were produced at room temperature using filtered cathodic arc (FCA) deposition, which results in a high sp3 to sp2 bond ratio. Raman spectroscopy characterization reveals that the sp3 to sp2 ratio can be controlled by tuning the applied substrate bias. Optical characterization in turn shows only minor impairment to the Ag-mirror’s overall spectral response in the UV to NIR spectral range with a more substantial decrease in performance around the surface plasmon polariton region. FCA-deposited DLC shows promise as an alternative protective coating providing an increase in durability over conventional coatings without significantly impairing the UV response.
Depositing thin films is often limited to a specific deposition process by which precursors are transported in a deposition environment. In other words, a deposition environment in which two deposition processes complementary to each other are unified may offer new insights in designing thin film structures. This view motivated us to combine atomic layer deposition (ALD) and magnetron sputtering (SPU) in a single chamber – sputtering atomic layer augmented deposition (SALAD). The SALAD system offers benefits of consistently delivering precursors in ALD and freely choosing chemical elements in SPU. In this paper, the SALAD system is employed to deposit nanocomposites consisting of multiple layers of aluminum oxide deposited by ALD and copper layers deposited by SPU. Distinctive dispersion features seen in optical properties of the nanocomposites are analyzed to reveal the interrelationship between structural properties and electronic properties of the nanocomposites.
Depositing thin films is often limited to a specific deposition process by which precursors are transported and reacted in a deposition environment. In other words, a deposition environment in which two deposition processes are unified should offer a new perception of devising a thin film structure, which galvanizes our combining atomic layer deposition (ALD) and magnetron sputtering (SPU) in a single chamber – sputtering atomic layer augmented deposition (SALAD). The SALAD system offers advantages of both ALD capable of delivering precursor precisely and accurately and SPU versatile in choosing chemical elements. In this paper, the SALAD system is employed to deposit nanocomposites consisting of multiple pairs of an aluminum oxide thin film deposited by ALD and a copper thin film deposited by SPU. Optical properties collected from the nanocomposites show distinctive dispersion features to which the effective medium approximation does not seem to simply apply.
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