Materion Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings, a Materion
Corporation (NYSE:MTRN) business, announces its new Large Area Optics
(LAO) laboratory is now fully operational and offering a capability
matched by few other facilities in the world. The Lab is able to
manufacture precision, high-performance optical interference filters in
sizes much larger than those previously available.
All components of the Lab were custom-designed and built to Materion
performance specifications, including a large spectrophotometer. This
piece of equipment joins the coating machine and substrate cleaning
system in a new ISO 6/7 clean room. Materion is now able to meet the
growing need in the astronomy community for much larger-sized coated
optics which will be used in a new class of extremely large telescopes.
International Large Area Optics Lab Projects
During the 18-month period the LAO laboratory was under development,
Materion had large optics work already underway. This included the
successful management of large optics astronomy projects in five
countries for use in telescopes located in Hawaii, Australia and Chile.
Among the projects:
Impressive results were achieved coating large narrow bandpass filters
for the Hyper Suprime Camera (HSC) in the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea,
Hawaii. Early LAO successes included coating 600 mm diameter filters
with high levels of consistency and laying the groundwork for Subaru’s
switch from wide bandpass (WB) filters to narrow bandpass (NB) filters.
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Anti-reflective (AR) Coatings on Large, Curved Optics
Materion’s first demonstration of its capability to deposit AR coatings
on large, curved optics was for the Kiepenheuer Institut fur
Sonnenphysik (KIS). The optics produced are for the Visible Tunable
Filter (VTF) being developed in Germany for the future Advanced
Technology Solar Telescope in Hawaii. When operational, it will be the
largest solar telescope in the world.
Another project allowed Materion to take advantage of its new ability to
coat large narrow filters. The Company coated an H-alpha BP filter on a
large red glass substrate. (H-alpha refers to the hydrogen emission at
656nm and is a common wavelength used by astronomers.) The filter will
be installed in the 268 megapixel SkyMapper Telescope at Siding Spring
Observatory, near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia.
Current and Upcoming Astronomy Projects
Materion is currently manufacturing a five filter set for microlensing
science observation in the southern hemisphere which will be installed
in Chile in 2014, but owned and managed by the Korean Astronomy Science
Institute.
In early 2014, Materion is expecting a number of challenging projects
for the LAO Lab. Among them are telescope imager upgrades for current
astronomy customers and coating work for new spectrograph instruments.
Materion also has plans for developing and demonstrating other types of
filters, including dichroic beamsplitters, enhanced mirrors and notch
filters. For more information about our Large Area Optics Lab and
Materion coating capabilities, contact Tom Mooney, Product Engineering
Manager, Space & Astronomy, at: Thomas.Mooney@Materion.com
Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings is a Materion Corporation
business. Materion Corporation is headquartered in Mayfield Heights,
Ohio. The company, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, supplies
highly engineered advanced enabling materials to global markets.
Products include precious and non-precious metals, inorganic chemicals
and powders, specialty coatings, specialty engineered beryllium alloys,
beryllium and beryllium composites, and engineered clad and plated metal
systems.
Copyright Business Wire 2013