Double optical monitoring of dip coating with a time-varying refractive index

A brief overview of optical monitoring for vacuum and wet-bench film-deposition processes is presented. Interferometric and polarimetric measurements are combined with regard to simultaneous monitoring of refractive index and physical thickness in real time. Monitoring stability and accuracy are verified during dip coating with a transparent oil standard. This double optical technique is applied to dip coating with a multicomponent zirconyl chloride aqueous solution, whose resulting temporal refractive-index and physical-thickness curves indicate good reproducibility as well as significant sensitivity to changes of film-flow properties during the dip-coating process. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.