On the Choice of Monitoring Procedure of Optical Coating Deposition

Theoretical results are formulated to assess the strength of the effect of self-compensation of errors in layer thicknesses of multilayer optical coatings. They are applicable to any method of optical monitoring of the deposition process. It is shown that considering a possible presence of a strong error self-compensation effect is of great importance for choosing a monitoring method. A comparative analysis of the results obtained to date to assess the strength of the error self-compensation effect for various types of coatings has been carried out. Moreover, in this work, a number of results were obtained directly for the first time. The results obtained can be used to select the optimal method for monitoring the deposition process depending on the type of coating.