SCRATCH-PROOF TRANSPARENCE FOR PLASTIC

Main Menu | News By Date | News By Supplier | News By Category | About Us

SCRATCH-PROOF TRANSPARENCE FOR PLASTIC
06 June 2003 - Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.

The "one-times-one" chant of the witches "This must ye ken! From one take ten" guild in Goethe's Faust could be re-written by this new process simplificationm, call it: "This must be done! From two makes one". Until now, plastic lenses were first hardened and then treated with an antireflective coating in a separate step. Now it's done simultaneously, without witchcraft.

"We have achieved new levels of surface quality with our new coating process," emphasizes Dr. Ulrike Schulz from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena. "What really distinguishes this process are the outstanding antireflection properties." Together with department head Dr. Norbert Kaiser and doctoral candidate Peter Munzert, Schulz was awarded the Joseph-von-Fraunhofer Prize.

"The idea was simple," recalls Schulz. "Today, optics made from plastics are used in cameras or CD players. And most of us are familiar with plastic displays used in car radios, GPS receivers or telephones. To keep the surfaces from scratching, they must be hardened. Our thought was, why not add the antireflective property at the same time that the thick hardening layer is being applied?"

To remove disturbing reflection, thin layers of high refractive metal oxides are integrated into a hard, glass-like silicon dioxide film. Owing to a high refraction index, the thin layers reflect the exact amount of incidental light needed to cancel out the light originally reflected from the plastic surface, making the surface nearly reflection-free.

Such coating systems are patented under the name AR-hard. The IOF spin-off, mso Jena Mikroschichtoptik GmbH, is already deploying this technology to harden and add antireflective coatings to optical instruments and sensor lenses. In addition, the IOF has been working with a consortium of companies over the past year to utilize the technology to coat displays.

"The process can be adapted to the needs of the individual user, because it's well suited for use even with more complicated surface forms," adds Kaiser, head of the department. "We can also cover a wide spectral area, from 200-nanometer wavelength UV over visible light to near infrared."

http://www.fraunhofer.de

About: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise and of wide benefit to society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains over 80 research units at more than 40 different locations throughout Germany. A staff of some 12,700, predominantly qualified scientists and engineers, works with an annual research budget of over one billion euros. Of this sum, more than € 900 million is generated through contract research. Two thirds of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects. The remaining one third is contributed by the German federal and Länder governments, as a means of enabling the institutes to pursue more fundamental research in areas that are likely to become relevant to industry and society in five or ten years’ time.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is also active on an international level: Affiliated research centers and representative offices in Europe, the USA and Asia provide contact with the regions of greatest importance to present and future scientific progress and economic development.

More News:
  • For June 2003
  • From Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
  • For Contract Research Organisation