Leveraging Micro- and Nanofabrication Techniques to Advance Optical Interference Coatings

Garrett D. Cole provides an overview of R&D and production efforts that relate to state-of-the-art thin-film optical coatings and interference structures. He includes a review of general coating technologies relevant to industrial production, as well as emerging trends that leverage semiconductor-based micro- and nanofabrication techniques for the development of advanced optical solutions with novel functionality. Cole highlights substrate-transferred crystalline coating technology, utilizing lithography, selective etching, and direct bonding processes derived from the microelectronics and micro-optics industry for the manufacturing of low-loss semiconductor supermirrors.

About the presenter
Garrett D. Cole obtained his Ph.D. in Materials from UC Santa Barbara in 2005 with his dissertation focusing on the development of novel MEMS-tunable vertical-cavity laser amplifiers. Since completing his doctorate, Cole has held positions ranging from the first employee of a high-tech startup (Aerius Photonics LLC, now FLIR Electro-Optical Components), to a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Marie Curie Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and a university assistant in the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna.

Cole has co-authored 2 book chapters and published 50 journal articles including papers in Science, Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Photonics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Leveraging his expertise in micro- and nanofabrication, tunable semiconductor lasers, and cavity optomechanics, Cole, together with Professor Markus Aspelmeyer, founded Crystalline Mirror Solutions (CMS), an international photonics start-up commercializing high-performance optics for laser-based metrology and manufacturing systems. CMS was successfully acquired by Thorlabs Inc. in December 2019 and has been rebranded as Thorlabs Crystalline Solutions (TCS).