The Denton Optical Coating Heritage

For over 40 years Denton has being supplying high performance optical coatings for a vast array of applications in industries such as military, aerospace, telecommunications and bio-medical. Broad band anti-reflectance (BBAR), protected metallic mirrors and multilayer all-dielectric thin film filters are all routinely produced at Denton, both in high volume production as well as small pilot lots for start-up projects. The majority of our coatings are deposited using ion-assisted deposition (IAD), a technique that allows “cold processing” of plastics and other temperature-sensitive substrates. IAD also produces films that are extremely dense, moisture-stable and with excellent durability.

In the military and aerospace arena, our metallic coatings – aluminum, gold and especially our protected silver – have long been the coating of choice for many defense, satellite and telescope programs, such as CIRS, GEODSS, MODIS. They have excellent durability and their reflectance can be tailored to any spectral requirement. We routinely handle optics up to 1.2 meter, and larger sizes can be processed on a custom basis. Our expertise in this field was highlighted in September 2007 when we were awarded the contract to coat the primary mirror segments for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will succeed Hubble..

Our range of anti-reflectance coatings covers all spectral regions from UV to far infrared. They can be deposited on virtually any substrate material, such as glasses, plastics, silica, ZnS, InP, ZnSe, Ge, Si, GaAs. Reflectances of less than 0.1% are available at most wavelengths, and in the demanding field of fiber optics and telecommunications we offer coatings with return losses of better than -40dB.

Multilayer, all-dielectric thin film filters offer tremendous design flexibility that allows us to modify the reflectance and transmittance of optical elements. Hot mirrors, cold mirrors, beam splitters, long-wave pass (LWP), short-wave pass (SWP) and narrow-band pass (NBP) can all be produced over the same wavelength ranges and on the same substrate materials as our anti-reflectance coatings. In the medical industry Denton has supplied thousands of color-correcting cold mirror (CCCM) coatings on plastic reflectors for surgical lighting in operating rooms. We also provide the special coatings that are required for laser facets.

At Denton we have always been happy to take on both high volume production work as well as small research projects. We like to provide innovative solutions to unusual coating requirements, and we are always willing to collaborate with customers towards solving their coating needs. Now that we are part of Quantum Coating (QCI), we have a renewed commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. If you have an optical coating requirement, come to QCI and see what we have to offer!