New Anti-Reflective Coating

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Scientists have attempted for years to create materials that can eliminate unwanted reflections, which can degrade the performance of various optical components and devices. “We started thinking, there is no viable material available in the refractive index range 1.0-1.4,” Schubert said. "If we had such a material, we could do incredible new things in optics and photonics." So the team created one. Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.