Effect of the working gas of the ion-assisted source on the optical and mechanical properties of SiO2 films deposited by dual ion beam sputtering with Si and SiO2 as the starting materials.

Silicon and fused-silica targets are used as the starting materials for depositing silicon oxide (SiO2) films. The SiO2 films are prepared by a dual ion beam sputtering deposition system with a main ion source and an ion-assisted source with different working gases. The films deposited are then examined and compared by using a visible spectrophotometer, a Fourier-transform IR spectrophotometer, an atomic force microscope, and contact angle instruments.

Rugate filter made with composite thin films by ion-beam sputtering.

Composite films of Ta-Si oxide with refractive indices that varied from 1.48 to 2.15 were realized by using rf ion-beam sputtering.

Coating uniformity improvement for a dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing filter by use of the etching effect.

The uniformity of optical narrow-bandpass filters for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) has been improved by control of the coating parameters of electron guns and the ion source. The optical film was deposited by the electron gun and was etched by the ion source during the ion-assisted deposition process. The uniformity of the coating of a 100 GHz DWDM filter is better than +/- 0.