Production of MF and DC-pulse sputtered anti-reflective/anti-static optical interference coatings using a large area in-line coater

This paper is on the deposition of antistatic and antireflective coatings (ARAS coatings) based on TiO2, SiO2 and ITO films on 300 x 300 mm2 glass substrates using a production-like in-line sputter system with a cathode length of 750 mm. In order to achieve a reproducible and homogenous deposition process, we studied the deposition of single and multilayer systems for different process conditions. The optical constants and individual layer thicknesses have been determined by variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry and spectroscopic photometry as well as by X-ray reflectometry (XRR). With this information we used sequent redesigns of the ARAS stack in order to compensate for film thickness deviations during the deposition of the multilayer stack. Approaches to minimize the drawbacks of depositing optical coatings using in-line sputter systems are shown.