Interest of broadband optical monitoring for thin-film filter manufacturing

Broadband optical monitoring for thin-film filter manufacturing is more and more developed thanks to better performances of spectrometers with array detectors. We compare this optical monitoring with turning point monitoring and quartz monitoring of different designs. The sensitivity to thickness errors and to refractive index errors is evaluated. We show that real time determination of deposited thickness is a valuable criterion. We also present our experimental setup of transmittance and reflectance broadband optical monitoring. The use of a 400-1000 nm range combined with a signal-to-noise ratio of similar to 2500 in transmittance and 1000 in reflectance permits us to expect the manufacturing of high-performance non-quarter-wave designs. A first manufacturing of an 18-layer non-quarter-wave high-pass filter is provided. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America.