Staggered Broad-Band Reflecting Multilayers

Abstract

Considerable broadening of the reflectance band of a multilayer stack may be obtained by staggering the layer thicknesses in such a way that they form either an arithmetic or geometric progression. Results are shown for asymmetric and symmetric filters of 15, 25, and 35 layers. The presence of the narrowband transmission peaks exhibited by the symmetric filters is explained, and the advantages of the use of this type of filter as an interference filter is discussed.