Nanostructured, Ultrabroadband Antireflective Coatings for Glass and Polymers

The idea of employing higher-order surfaces in optical systems to improve performance has been around for decades. Designing and fabricating aspheric lenses in larger quantities and at a quality level sufficient for optical systems, however, began only about 20 years ago.

Considerations of freeform surfaces in optical designs originated around the same time, but the evolution over the last decade has been significant. Bingel presents an expanded number of options for measuring and manufacturing these high-order surfaces.

About the presenter
Astrid Bingel, Ph.D., studied physics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany. Afterward, she received a diploma and did doctoral research at Fraunhofer IOF, where her research on transparent and conductive thin films was related to the work she did at the University Jena. Next, Bingel worked as a post doc in the Functional Surfaces and Coatings department at Fraunhofer IOF, where she covered topics ranging from environmentally stable antireflective coatings to coating technologies on plastics.

Today, as head of the research group Coatings on Plastics, she works with her colleagues on coating technologies specially developed for organic substrates, with a focus on nanostructured broadband antireflective coatings called AR-plas.