Optical quality mirrors are not your everyday mirror design and are dependent upon the final application, the desired quality, and of course, your project budget. Mirror designs are available as standard off-the-shelf products or as highly custom for material thickness, diameter, and reflection performance. High-reflector coatings which are capable of 99.0% or more are typically used in laser systems as there is very little light lost. The vast global demand for optical mirror coatings used in military, consumer, and medical markets continues to grow every year.
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Aluminum-coated mirrors
Enhanced aluminum coatings, including a dielectric overcoat, typically reflect 92-95% of the visible light spectrum and are the most common coating for optical mirror production. Thin layers of aluminum are applied to create a flat and highly reflective surface. Protected aluminum coatings may contain a single layer dielectric overcoat and typically reflect 90-92% in the visible region.
Silver vs. aluminum optical coatings
Sometimes referred to as metalized platings, the end-use determines whether silver or aluminum coatings are required. Your application will determine the reflectivity requirement as well as the emissivity (the energy radiated from the surface of the mirror).
Aluminum is highly desirable for UV applications when used as a single mirror source. Its high reflectance properties for UV and IR make it a clear choice for telescopes, life science, research, and defense applications.
Silver mirrors, on the other hand, perform better overall in the visible band, as it is the most reflective surface until the light source falls into the UV at 400 µm. Unless protected, bare silver will tarnish over time, which is undesirable as it degrades the mirror’s performance. Observatory telescopes have shown improved performance by changing from aluminum mirrors to silver-coated mirrors. Silver offers less reliability when adhering to glass materials and is more suited for coating metal substrates.
Defending your optic - Protected vs. non-protected coatings
Typically for higher durability, the harder metals such as aluminum coatings fare better. To determine if a protective layer is required, you must consider environmental factors like heat, salt, or humidity. Commonly, MIL-Spec testing and specifications need to be met for specific use cases, even if not a military application. All metal mirror coatings are quite thin and can be easily scratched if not handled carefully or cleaned too aggressively. A protective layer is added to a softer metal for increased durability. Typically, this layer is made of SiO for a visible wavelength mirror and is harder than the coating layer of gold, silver, or aluminum.
Get best-in-class IR with gold coatings. Protected gold polygons and spinners for today’s laser scanning technology, including LiDAR, for use in the IR wavelength range, are a common mirror coating request at AccuCoat. A dielectric overcoating may also be added at the end of the layering process to create a protective barrier to keep the optic clean and less prone to scratching. With a high average reflectance (97-99%), protected gold coatings offer higher performance and are the preferred option when mitigating loss from the light source.
Tips on Ordering Mirror Coatings. The initial questions when you are looking to create a mirror surface optic can be daunting. AccuCoat has given the first time optical mirror buyer a solid ground to start with by using our checklist developed for this purpose, Top Specs for Coatings on Metals.
Items to consider include:
For additional substrates tips, see our other checklists for RFQs on glass and plastics substrates.
The seasoned technical professionals at AccuCoat are available to walk you through the selection and design of the right coating for your application. We encourage you to contact our experts for support before your next mirror coating project.
The traditional mirror coating process are the alumiminum evaporation and silvering. By chamber vacuum evaporation machine, we can get an economy home mirror but the reflectivity rate of the mirror can get only 75% to 80%. And by silvering mirror the reflectivity could be increased up to 85% but this process has waste to environment, so it has been stopped by many counties . However, both coating process need a reliable back painting to protect the coating film otherwise the coating will shows the "black point" and separate from glass in some times.
The silvering mirror has a perfect reflectivity but the coating process is very pollution. Therefore, the factories has been stopped by many counties and this kind of process will be forbidden in the nearly future. The aluminium evaporation provide the economy solution however its film cannot stick on the glass very firmly. As well, the back painting contents some lead which is not conformity with none-lead material instructions.
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Goldstone Orient New Material & Equipment Co., Ltd. has successfully brings the sputtering coating to the mirror making process. It is an innovation changing on the mirror coating industry.
Sputtering Principle
Sputtering" is a vacuum process used to deposit very thin films on substrates. The large area horizontal on-line sputtering system is designed to continuously coat the metallic or compound layers on glass sheets for the production of reflective glass. The machine is fully automatic controlled and glass is continuously moving and coating from one end of the machine to the other. The available film series are solar control reflective glass, Low-e glass and mirror for a wide variety of commercial and scientific purposes.
The sputtering mirror provide the advantages
The continuous horizontal on-line sputtering system is designed for coating glass sheets with metallic layers to produce the products of aluminum mirror, chrome mirror, home mirror and automobile mirror. The machine is fully automatic controlled and the glass goes inside the machine from one end then goes out from the other end, thus the coating process is continuously worked. The continuous coating gives customer a very stable quality and high output.
High energy to deposite the atom on the glass, the coating film stick on the glass firmly.
Many kinds of metal could be used for the coating material, aluminium, titanium, chrome, stainless steel, copper, silver... Such makes a more colorful mirror than ever.
The coating process is continuous working, the painting machine could be connected online.
With the aluminium sputtering process, we can get a high reflectivity than evaporation process up to 83%.
Coated with hard coating, chrome and some semi-conductive film, the Front Surface Reflective Mirror is available which give us a more clear view.
We can use the metal or oxide to be the protective coating instead of the back painting, make the real None-lead mirror.
Aluminum Mirrors
High reflectivity, high deposit density, different material like Chrome, Stainless steel or Titanium could be coated as the protective layer. With advanced sputtering technology, the mirror producing industry has entered the new generation of less pollution and none-lead age.
Titanium Decoration Mirrors
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