With advancements in OR design and disease diagnostics, there is an increased focus on staff productivity and efficiency, which in turn enables improved patient quality of care. State-of-the-art OR lighting and monitors are constructed with a focus on room uptime, minimizing infection and color correctness for the best possible patient outcomes. Binocular loupes for dental surgery, surgical LED lighting, surgical robotics, endoscopes, and other in-office diagnostic tools have optical parts that are thin-film coated for peak performance and increased durability.
Environmental durability testing on coated glass and other substrates is essential for chemical exposure, humidity, temperature shifts, and abrasion when coating for durability in the medical practice or operating room. Thin film coatings applied to any optic components must be designed to weather these particular conditions, which will protect the substrate and the accuracy of the instrument’s performance and readings, which is paramount.
Specific tests for environmental conditions and humidity on AR coatings are a common customer request at AccuCoat. These tests are designed to work within the anticipated user humidity or temperature levels to ensure no coating, optic or performance degradation occurs.
Our coating design engineers have developed a coating and testing process to address various medical needs for extreme environments, including for aerospace, military, and consumer products. Glass and plastics are the most commonly requested substrates, as they offer more flexibility in the instrument design. We also provide custom coatings on silicon, fused silica, and germanium, among many others.
Additionally, our team has developed a process to AR coat polymer lenses to MIL-SPEC requirements for in-field use that stands up to military-grade chemicals.
Ensuring performance
We produce reflection and transmission spectral performance measurements ranging from 185nm to 3300nm and 2.5µm to 50µm wavelengths to cover the spectrum from the UV-VIS-NIR and LWIR.
AccuCoat’s typical testing on medical optics includes:
- Moderate Abrasion
- Severe Abrasion
- Adhesion
- Humidity Cycling
- Temperature Cycling
- Water Solubility
- Salt Solubility
- Solubility and Cleanability
Durability for Cleaning
Cleaning our optical coatings in the medical suite can be easily done with rubbing alcohol, acetone (not polymers), or a mild soap solution.
Furthermore, AccuCoat’s ability to coat a single prototype optic, a small run of optics for larger testing groups, or large volumes of approved optics gives you the ability to cover all of your needs from development to launch from one place, ensuring producibility. We supply in volumes over 150k parts/year, comfortably handling expensive components and stock molded parts, and have considerable experience cleaning and coating diamond-turned optics.
If your AR optical requirements for medical, ophthalmologic, or veterinary diagnostics and treatment include heavy durability and performance, we encourage you to explore how we can support your needs. Contact us at coatings@accucoatinc.com.
Topics: AR coatings, environmental durability, Thin film coating durability, coating medical optics