STRAT V6.1 is a Win32 application for editing, analysing, optimizing and establishing the manufacturing technologies of the optical coatings. This application can be runed on PC IBM computers supporting the Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 operating systems and it has a mouse. To enjoy the application facilities, it is better to use a computer with a PENTIUM II microprocessor at 466 MHz, a SVGA 15" (ideal 17" or 19") colour monitor with a 1280 x 1024 resolution. The application occupies on disk less than 10MB. This application is part of a coherent series of Windows applications for optics including:
This application was conceived considering the designing activity and technological research profile of the optical coating domain included into the optical industry in Pro Optica S.A. and I.O.R S.A. This application does not cover all the problems of the optical coatings (e.g. the designing of the "rugate filters", the quartz monitoring of the manufacturing process for the thin layers, etc.). This problems will be also approached in time. The novelty of this application consists in the data structure and the optical coating defining way. The data describing the optical coatings have dynamic-tree structure. An optical coating is defined as a "root" from which branch optical coatings can be generated, containing or not all the layers of the root optical coating also defined for some other conditions (substrate and incidence medium, incidence angle, incident radiation polarizing status). Also, during a working session, one can work simultaneously with more root optical coatings allowing the simultaneous analysis of more solutions of one and the same problem or different problems. The optical coatings at a certain given moment of the working session can be saved in files and reloaded for a future session. The maximum number of coatings with one can work, is limited by the RAM memory of the computer and by the limitations imposed by the Windows operating system (the number of handlers allowed for application). The number of layers for an optical coating is also limited by the calculus in double precision and by the existing possibilities at the present moment of application. The maximum number of optical materials for an optical coating is 10 (in the future version this number will not be limited, allowing that each layer of the coating should have its own material). This restriction will be explained when detailing the functions of STRAT V6.1 application. The displayed amounts are in simple precision.
IMPORTANT. To be a concordance between the calculated optical coatings (theoretical ones) and the experimental ones, the optical constants used in this application for the coating materials must be those obtained experimentally. The evaporation geometry must be also very well-known (uniformity, geometrical coefficient, evaporation sources features, etc.). Before using an optical material for optical coatings, it must be studied, so that the material optical constants should be reproducible in the process of production under as closer as possible tolerances. The optical constants of the respective literature do not always coincide with those obtained experimentally by you.
The application is written in Microsoft Visual C 5.0 (no MFC).