Porous broadband antireflection coating by glancing angle deposition

We deposited graded-index SiO2 films using glancing angle deposition to produce high-transmission antireflection coatings on glass. Because of the accurate control over the thin-film microstructure provided by this technique, we were able to create graded densities with a Gaussian profile resulting in transmission values greater than 99.9% for a single-layer interface with bandwidths up to 460 nm. The graded-index layer also provides low reflectance at nonnormal angles of incidence with transmission values degrading little for incidence angles up to 30degrees. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.