With the current state of the art in designing optical coatings, a reliable monitoring of their production becomes a key to success in many application areas. There exists a great variety of different monitoring approaches.  A primary subdivision of monitoring techniques is their subdivision into non-optical techniques (quartz crystal and time monitoring) and optical monitoring techniques.

Optical monitoring techniques can be then subdivided into monochromatic monitoring and broadband monitoring techniques.

Monitoring techniques can be divided into direct and indirect ones. In the case of direct monitoring, transmittance or reflectance measurements are performed on at least one of the coatings to be manufactured while in the case of indirect monitoring layer thicknesses are monitored on separate witness substrates.

The production potential of broadband monitoring techniques was first demonstrated nearly three decades ago. Broadband optical monitoring is especially useful for deposition systems with on-line reoptimization of optical coatings.

Monochromatic optical monitoring remains an important and widely used tool. OptiLayer proposes a algorithms for choosing a proper sequence of monitoring wavelengths for all coating layers (monitoring strategy).

OptiLayer Monitoring options include:

• Broadband monitoring simulation;
• Specification of the Monitoring Spreadsheet;
• Advanced monochromatic monitoring strategies;
• Monochromatic Monitoring simulation;
• Pre-production estimation of errors;
• WDM monitoring simulation.

OptiLayer Automation options and OptiReOpt library propose tools for on-line characterization and re-optimization of optical coatings.