5^th International Conference on Carbon Chemistry and Materials

Thin conducting films (TCFs) are of considerable interest for commercial and space applications, particularly in solar cells, flat panel displays, and electrochromic windows. Recently, NASA space travel applications have established requirements for environmentally robust anti-reflection (AR) TCFs that require <0.5% total losses (e.g., reflection, absorption, and scattering). The guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems utilized in NASA’s volatiles investigating polar exploration rover (Space qualified rover lidar), Dragonfly (Ocellus), and on-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing- 1 (Kodiak) missions require pulsed transmit beams with exceptionally high-power densities. In this talk, I will discuss the development and manufacturing of an environmentally friendly, transparent, conductive, and AR coating suitable for use in GNC LIDAR and other space-flight applications using indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films. We have deposited and optimized ITO thin films utilizing a radio frequency (RF) sputtering process with varying gas flow, substrate temperature, and pressure, employing AR as the working medium. Various properties of ITO thin films such as surface morphology, optical and electrical properties will be presented. We found that the transmittance of ITO thin film at 1064 nm wavelength was 100%. Additionally, the sheet resistance measured was 362.1 Ohms per square, which closely aligns with conditions found in outer space, thereby ensuring the mitigation of static dust particle accumulation. We also built a six-layer thin film-designed device optimized for spectral characteristics at the targeted wavelength of 1064 nm using sputter deposition and conventional photolithography. This design incorporates a thin layer of ITO positioned between the outermost TiO2 and SiO2 layers. The performance of this structure will be presented as well.

PDF (Download Full text)