Coatings

Coatings Laboratory

Large chambers and cleanrooms, custom job environment, one-of-a-kind hardware, signifigant space heritage and infrastructure, and on-site world class metrology. Internationally recognized expertise in measure of reflectance (200nm -26microns), thermo-optical (a, e), and surface scatter properties (BRDF).

Basics of Our Coating Techniques

Surface Optics Corp.’s specialized coating systems use two different processes, vacuum deposition and pigmented paints with controlled pigment/binder constituents. Vacuum deposited coatings are manufactured using several different techniques standard in the coating industry:

Resistively heated thermal evaporation
Electron beam evaporation
Ion beam assisted deposition

LAB CAPABILITIES

VDA of Composite and Plastic Spaceflight Hardware (RF & Thermal Control)
Optical Coatings up to 2.5m
Web coating

Four chambers accommodate a variety of applications. Reflectors and optics up to 3 METERS can be coated. Coating processes scalable to meet larger reflector needs.2,000 sq.ft. cleanroom (ISO Class 6) for cleaning, handling, coating. 100’s of flight reflectors safely coated. Full design, fab, process capability for accommodating unique hardware.

COATING APPLICATIONS

The above processes are used to produce protected metal mirrors, low emittance thermal shields, lenses, bandpass filters, graphite antenna coatings, and high temperature coatings for composite structures and dielectric mirrors. Surface Optics has a number of contracts with the U.S. government, defense and commercial related firms for the development and application of specialty coatings. Coatings developed and applied by Surface Optics include:

EMI/EMP shielded windows
Satellite antenna coatings with controlled solar absorptance and emittance
Micro-optic, directionally coated, IR spectrally tailored low emissive coating
Visually reflective, microwave transparent coating
High durability exo-atmospheric IR coating
High efficiency silver based lens coating
Satellite telescope low emittance thermal protective coating
Signature/thermal control of ground-based and airborne vehicles

With adjacent measurement facilities that confirm coating specifications, SOC’s coating laboratory is fully equipped to provide for the most stringent coating needs.

SOC also manufactures thermal/signature control paints using optimization capability of SOC’s ScatCad analysis tools for pigment design, the laboratory instrumentation for database development and coating verification. Typical applications for this type of coating are for signature/thermal control of ground-based and airborne vehicles.

QUALITY COATING HERITAGE

After more than 20 years designing and delivering high precision coatings, Surface Optics has enjoyed collaborating on numerous space flight programs and contributing to the success of our customer’s projects.