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Accurate data about the optical properties of coating materials is important
for designing and manufacturing optical coatings. Because optical properties
may depend on the process used to deposit the coating, it is best to measure
the refractive index of layers produced by the process.
If you are designing a coating as a proof-of-concept, the accuracy of refractive
index data is less important. In this case, you can use material data from
published sources and then, after the actual indices have been substituted,
the coating design can be optimized again.
There are many sources of material data. Some of the more accessible ones are listed below.
If you know of any additional sources of data, please e-mail information to the address
given below.
Web:
- The Sopra company, which manufactures ellipsometers to determine the refractive index of
materials, recently posted a database containing optical data of more than 200 material files.
Software Spectra has converted this data to the format used by TFCalc. For more information,
click here.
Books:
- P. Klocek, Editor, Handbook of Infrared Optical Materials, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1991.
To order, contact Amazon.com
- E.D. Palik, Editor, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids, Academic Press, New York, 1985.
This version seems to be out of print.
- E.D. Palik, Editor, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids II, Academic Press, New York, 1991.
To order, contact Amazon.com
- E.D. Palik and G.K. Ghosh, Editors, Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids, Academic Press, New York, 1997.
This is a five-volume set of books. For more information and to order, contact
Academic Press
- L. Ward, The Optical Constants of Bulk Materials and Films, Adam Hilger, 1995.
To order, contact Amazon.com
Software and diskettes:
- The books edited by Palik are highly regarded because they collect data from many sources
and the data is given for a wide range of wavelengths. The data in the 1985 and 1991 volumes has been
transferred to diskettes, which are sold by the Optical Society of America. Click
here, and look in the software section for more details.
- SciVision, a division of Academic Press, has recently produced a software package called HOC that
contains all the data in the five-volume "Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids" mentioned above.
For more information, click here.
- SciVision also sells the SciGlass software, which has data about 200,000 glasses. For more
information, click here.
- An interesting program called OPTIMATR contains data on about 100 materials. This program runs in DOS.
It seems to be out of print.
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