Abstract. Angle-dependent dip coating (ADDC) is a modified dip coating technique that offers advantages for the production of optical interference filters. In contrast to conventional dip coating (DC), the substrate is withdrawn from the coating solution under an angle of inclination. Thereby, the two surfaces of the substrate are coated with individual film thicknesses. An experimental setup for ADDC has been built and the decisive process influences on coating thicknesses have been evaluated. In order to gain full control over the individual layer thicknesses, reaching from 20 nm to 160 nm, it is necessary to vary the following process parameters: lifting speed, angle of inclination and concentration of the dipping solution. The results of coating experiments prove the advantages of ADDC over DC. A first example aims at reducing the number of coating steps: an ADDC long pass filter produced in 10 coating steps reaches the same optical performance as a conventional DC filter made in 16 steps. A second example demonstrates the possibility to improve quality: a commercial DC beam splitter can be improved with respect to the flatness of transmission and reflection curves when being produced in 4 steps by ADDC instead of 8 steps by DC. Furthermore, ADDC offers the possibility to fabricate even narrow band pass filters, which are naturally difficult to obtain by conventional DC.

This study reports the optics of ultra-dense, nanoscopic gratings of peacock spiders that cause either angle-dependent or stable colours.

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The data transfer capacity of a communication channel is limited by the Shannon–Hartley theorem and scales as log2(1+SNR) for a single channel with a given power signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We implement an array of atom-optical receivers in a single-input-multi-output configuration by using spatially distributed probe light beams. The data capacity of the distributed receiver configuration is observed to scale as log2(1+N×SNR) for an array consisting of N receivers. Our result is independent of the modulation frequency, and we show that such enhancement of the bandwidth cannot be obtained by a single receiver with a similar level of combined optical power. We investigate both theoretically and experimentally the origins of the single channel capacity limit for our implementation.

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Stress in thin films has been measured very precisely (< 10 MPa) by analysing the curvature of quartz glass substrates before and after film deposition by means of a ZYGO Mark IV interferometer system. TiO2 films of approximately 100 nm thickness were prepared by reactive evaporation (RE), reactive ion plating (IP), plasma impulse chemical vapor deposition (PICVD) and spin coating (SC). Large variations in stress are found for different coating techniques and deposition conditions. This can be correlated to differences in optical properties, film density and crystalline structure. Relaxation effects and the influence of thermal treatment are also studied. The crystallization of amorphous TiO2 during heat treatment is accompanied by significant changes in film stress. The crystal size and morphology of TiO2 films after heat treatment strongly depend on the deposition technique and process conditions.

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Plasma impulse CVD deposited titania thin films, deposited at low substrate temperatures, exhibit low volume losses of < 0.2 dB/cm and high environmental stability. Their use in novel concepts for integrated optical immunosensors is discussed.