*Ronald R. Willey¹, Audrius Valavicius^2
1Willey Optical, Consultants, Charlevoix, MI; ²Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Vilnius, Lithuania
Optical thin film layers of silver, on the order of 10 nm effective optical thickness, can vary significantly in index of refraction, n and k. These properties vary with the materials which interface with the thin silver layers and with the processes and post processing used to deposit and treat those layers. Once a given combination of materials and processes have been characterized over a range of thicknesses from ~1 to ~50 nm, this data can be used to design coatings to most nearly provide the percent reflectance and transmittance versus wavelength desired. How well the measured data can be fit with functions that allow simulation in the design process, depends on the models used in the fitting process.