Quick Shot

Optical Manufacturing Process Engineer, John Spaulding, and Coating Operator, Justin Foster, are shown installing an optic on a new prototype stage built to support research and development work on glancing angle deposition (GLAD) coatings. The deposition system is designed to allow for growth of an oriented, birefringent film structure in stripes across an optical surface, and the resulting film thickness is controlled such that each stripe region is a quarter-wave plate. This custom stage, designed and built by Angstrom Engineering, has movements for x and y translation, tilt, and rotation that make it possible to manipulate the part during deposition in order to control the resulting film structure, and the stage will be able to coat up to a 100-mm-diam optic. GLAD coating research supports the potential manufacture of a distributed polarization rotator (DPR) component that would be integral to beam-smoothing efforts for direct-drive or polar-direct-drive campaigns at the National Ignition Facility.