Effective graded refractive-index anti-reflection coating for high refractive-index polymer ophthalmic lenses

The reduction of optical reflection is important for many applications such as solar cells and lenses. The effective graded refractive-index (graded-RI) anti-reflection (AR) coating is designed a tri-layer structure with SiO2, MgF2, and ITO thin films for high refractive-index polymer ophthalmic lenses. The effective graded-RI AR coating is fabricated using the E-beam evaporation system. The mean reflectance of the effective graded-RI AR coating lens was measured to 2.9% (400-800 nm), which was lower than that of the commercial multi-layer AR coating lens (3.9%) for high RI polymer lenses (n=1.67). Also, the blocking of the high energy visible light is more effective than the commercial multi-layer AR coating lens. It is known that the high energy visible light caused retinal damage. The ability to change the maximum reflectance band of an AR coating by simply changing the film thickness is advantageous for other potential applications.