VON ARDENNE launches OPTA X, a new sputter system for high-precision optical filters

VON ARDENNE had already decided to enter the precision optics market in 2018 building on a long tradition of providing coating solutions for optical applications. The development of the OPTA X was derived from this tradition. It was presented for the first time at the Laser World of Photonics 2019 and aroused a strong interest in the industry. This opportunity of a direct exchange with the customers was used to discuss and optimize the technological concept.

The result is a particularly flexible platform solution for the special requirements of precision optics. The system can be used to create extremely low-defect coatings and highly complex coating designs with several hundred individual layers on both flat and curved surfaces. What is most important here is the extreme precision and uniformity of the coating. The process control is variable, coatings can be metallic, reactive or in meta-mode.

A first success was the decision of the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST to award VON ARDENNE with a contract in November 2019. Having won this institute as a customer for this new system, with its well-founded technological competence in precision optics, was a first recognition of the technological concept. With this system, researchers will be able to apply optical precision coatings on 2D and 3D components of up to 70 millimeters in height.

The OPTA X complements VON ARDENNE’s product range for the application of high-precision optics to smaller areas with a coating width of max. 200 to 300 millimeters. This goes hand in hand with the Dresden-based company’s goal of becoming more involved in the growing market for optical coatings by providing suitable solutions. The current product portfolio of the VON ARDENNE Group for precision optics ranges from ion beam sputtering systems (scia Systems GmbH), to the new OPTA X and the already established VISS platform to the GC120V for largest precision optical substrates.

VON ARDENNE has been successfully cooperating with several institutes of the Fraunhofer Society for years and is now pleased to count yet another institute of this renowned research association to its partners: the Fraunhofer IST.