SBIR-STTR Award

Direct to Phase II

The high performance, ultra-narrow bandpass optical thin film interference filter is a key optical component for the applications of LIDAR, bio-sensing and many other merging applications. Optical thin film interference filters are traditionally manufactured by physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique. However it is subject to intrinsic drawbacks of poor large area uniformity, especially on curved surface, difficulty in thickness control and high cost associated with vacuum technology and thickness monitoring tools. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) on the other hand has been well established for precise thickness control in atomic scale, excellent large area uniformity and conformity for coatings on complex surface, and low growth temperatures. Therefore it is well suited for precise optical coatings and related applications on large area optical glasses. A wide range of high quality dielectric materials (oxides, nitrides, fluorides, carbides, etc.) with high, medium and low refractive indexes are available by ALD, most of which can be deposited in a single batch ALD reactor thus complexity and production cost can be reduced. These merits provide an excellent solution to manufacturing various high performance bandpass filters required very tight uniformity

Benefit:
The ultra-narrow bandpass optical filter is a key optical component in active remote sensing techniques, such as LIDAR which is now being utilized for obstacle avoidance in autonomous vehicles, urban planning, defense, security, infrastructure development, and many other merging applications. These applications demand larger receiver aperture size, low unit cost and high yield with improved performance such as higher transmission, larger acceptance angle, narrow band pass, etc. The success of this program will not only directly improve the ultra-narrow bandpass optical filter performance of existing commercial LIDAR systems but also develop a high yield, low-cost ALD coating process and manufacturing tool to produce such high performance filter systems. The business impact of using such low cost ALD tools is critical for example, subcomponents of the filter system can be applied to short range Lidar systems being considered for the autonomous automobile market, where unit cost at minimum performance is key. There is already a sizeable market for optical filters of $3.6 B/year which is expected to grow significantly with 5% CAGR. Our unique coating design based on ALD technology draw interest primarily from research institutes and optical industry pursuing high performance and customized design and special applications on very larger area, temperature sensitive substrates, curved surface, atomic scale thickness control, etc. We expect to ramp up to sales revenue of approximately $ 2million/year based on an anticipated sales and service.

Keywords:
interference filter, narrowband, optical filter, LIDAR, thin-film, high yield