Illuminated optics. History of invention and production

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
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Illuminated optics. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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Enlightenment of optics is the application of a thin film or several films one on top of the other to the surface of lenses adjoining air. This is necessary to increase the light transmission of the optical system.

The refractive index of such films is less than the refractive index of lens glasses (not always).

Antireflection films reduce the reflection of incident light from the surface of the optical element, thus improving the light transmission of the system and the contrast of the optical image.

Enlightened Optics
Binoculars with coated optics

A coated lens requires careful handling, as the films applied to the surface of the lenses are easily damaged. In addition, the thinnest films of contaminants (grease, oil) on the surface of the antireflection coating disrupt its operation and sharply increase the reflection of light from the contaminated surface. It should be remembered that fingerprints destroy the anti-reflective coating over time.

According to the method of application and the composition of the antireflection coating, enlightenment can be physical (sputtering in a vacuum) and chemical (etching). Etching was used at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment.

The method of forming mono- and multimolecular films was developed by Irving Langmuir and his student Katherine Blodgett in the 1930s. Currently, this technology, called the Langmuir-Blodgett method, is actively used in the production of modern electronic devices.

Schematic diagram of obtaining Langmuir-Blodgett films (click to enlarge)

Even at school, Katherine Blodgett made a firm decision to become a scientist. But, although her grades in physics and mathematics were excellent, it was not easy to do this - at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, such a career was considered unsuitable for a woman. The case helped.

Before leaving school, during the Christmas holidays of 1916, she joined a tour of the General Electric (GE) research center in Schenectady, New York, where her father had once worked as head of the patent department. One of the researchers, chemist Irving Langmuir, who remembered George Blodgett, drew attention to a girl who showed interest in scientific work. Katherine's enthusiasm impressed him and he encouraged her to continue her education.

At the University of Chicago, where Catherine entered in 1917, she studied the absorption of gases by coal and improved the design of a gas mask. Impressed by her progress, two years later Langmuir hired her as his assistant.

Katherine was the first female researcher to be hired by GE (the company's management never had to regret it). For the first few years, under the direction of Langmuir, she was engaged in the improvement of incandescent lamps, and in 1924 she went to Great Britain, to the famous Cavendish Laboratory, which was led by the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Sir Ernst Rutherford.

Two years later, Katherine, already a doctor, returned to her native company and, together with Lagmuir, took up the chemistry of thin films. The result of studies of monomolecular (one molecule thick) layers on the surface of a liquid was the award of Langmuir in 1932 with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Langmuir films remained a purely scientific phenomenon that could only explain the color of soap bubbles and gasoline film on water until Blodgett, known to the company as Cathy, in the mid-1930s found a way to transfer monomolecular films to hard plates (still this method has since been known as the Langmuir-Blodgett method) and has not found that films can be applied one on top of the other.

Katherine came up with an idea: if each thickness has its own "interference" color, then by applying the required number of layers, you can make ordinary glass (reflecting up to 10% of the incident light) completely, 99% transparent! A film of 44 layers of barium stearate (a close relative of soap) turned out to be optimal, and in 1938 GE announced the creation of an "invisible" (enlightened) glass, now familiar to almost everyone who has ever seen binoculars or a photographic lens.

Author: S.Apresov

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