SPI Supplies^® Brand Custom Coating Service - ITO and Quartz

Introduction:

SPI Supplies can offer a reliable and high quality ITO custom coating service for customer supplied substrates (or perhaps SPI Supplies can supply the substrates even cheaper than our customers can make them themselves). We are able to coat, not just glass and quartz but also many different kinds of plastics. All coatings are done on state-of-the-art coating facilities which permit the coating of truly large (1 m x 1 m) parts. Our customers have one common denominator: They need highly transparent conductive coatings for general display purposes such as heater screens, RFI (EMC) filters, touch screens and windows, anti-static properties, just to name a few.

What is available?

Our main core coating capability is the coating of ITO on to glass or plastic (note that most ITO coaters can not do plastics of any type). But there is a subset of our customers who require higher transmittance and in response to those customer requests, we can now offer two additional coatings:

a) Index matching coating, which consists of a layer of quartz that is applied to the top of the already applied ITO coating. Depending on just what wavelength is being used, the transmittance can be increased from slightly to significantly. For smaller quantities (ones that involve less than 1500 sq. inches, money can be saved if you can use the ITO coating at one of the standard ITO resistivities.

b) Anti-reflective (AR) coating, which is applied to the side opposite to the ITO coating. Even when the index matching coating has already been applied, the transmittance can be increased even more, in order that there be the maximum transmittance.

It has been our experience that when one wants to increase the transmittance, they do the index matching coating first in part because it is on the same side as the ITO coating and also, the biggest increase in transmittance is achieved with this coating. Then if it is determined that even more transmittance would be desirable, we proceed with the AR coating.

The challenge:

Technically, our coating capability is second to none. We have that aspect of the business under tight control. However for us, there is the need to be able to communicate with a customer their precise needs, anticipate any potential problems, and then get back with a price and delivery time. We find this can be done the most efficiently via our website ITO/quartz coating questionnaire.