The trichroid thin-film polarizer is designed for an angle of incidence of 45° and exhibits excellent reflection properties for red (640 nm), green (520 nm), and blue (450 nm) light for s-polarization. The p-polarization, on the other hand, is almost completely transmitted.
The production of such polarizers requires particularly compact layers with a low layer thickness tolerance. The manufacturer achieves these properties with a modern ion beam sputtering (IBS) coating system. In the process, the coating material is removed from a target by an ion beam and atomized (sputtered). Therefore, the material particles have a very high kinetic energy and are very mobile when deposited on the substrate. This enables particularly compact layers, and considerably more complex designs can be created than with other processes.