Anti-reflective polymer-nanocomposite coatings fabricated by RIR-MAPLE

Abstract

There is increasing demand for functional polymeric optical coatings for plastic substrates. In the case of anti-reflective (AR) coatings, this is challenging because polymers exhibit a relatively narrow range of refractive indices. We synthesized a four-layer AR stack using hybrid polymer:nanoparticle materials deposited by resonant infrared matrixassisted pulsed laser evaporation (RIR-MAPLE). An Er:YAG laser ablated frozen solutions of a high-index composite containing TiO2 nanoparticles and PMMA, alternating with a low-index solution of PMMA. The optimized AR coatings, with thicknesses calculated using commercial software, yielded a coating for polycarbonate with relative transmission over 94%, scattering less than 5% and a reflection coefficient below 0.8% across the visible range.