Diamond Coatings offer an extensive range of special optical coatings including, among others, beam splitters. Here’s everything you need to know about beam splitters.
What are Beam Splitters?
Also often referred to as power splitters, beam splitters (or beamsplitters) are optical devices capable of splitting incident light beams (such as, for example, laser beams) into multiple beams (two or more) of equal or unequal optical power.
There are numerous different beam splitter types, the most important of which are:
Cube Bean Splitters – Typically consisting of 2 interfacing (bound together by transparent cement or resin) triangular prisms, with beam separation occurring at this interface. Power splitting ratios at given wavelengths can be adjusted by varying the thickness of this layer and a cube’s optical properties (i.e. polarising properties & operation bandwidth) can be modified by application of multi-layer dielectric coatings to one prism or both.
Plate Beam Splitters – Dielectric/dichroic mirrors frequently used in laser technology to split beams at a convenient 45° angle of incidence (resulting in a 90°deflection angle for one of the subsequent output beams), plate splitters essentially can be designed for different deflection angles. They can also be optimised for minimised polarisation or to function as thin-film polarisers. Different dielectric coating designs can provide diverse power splitting ratios.
Other beam splitter types include:
- Metal-coated (i.e. half-silvered) mirrors
- Thin membranes known as pellicles
- Waveguide beam splitters
- Micro-optic & fibre-optic beam splitters
- Multiple cascaded beam splitters and
- Diffractive optics beam splitters
These beam splitter types are used for different purposes including, for instance, laser systems, projectors and photo cameras; autocorrelators and interferometers. Learn more.
Diamond Coatings Beam Splitters & Special Optical Coatings
Diamond Coatings offer a range of high-quality beam splitters providing varying transmission/reflection values (i.e. 70/30 or 50/50 +/- 1.5%). Reflecting some incident light and transmitting the remainder, beam splitters are most frequently used at 45° angles of incidence. Diamond Coatings can, however, design beam splitters for other incidence angles.
If a comparatively high amount of absorption is acceptable, metal coatings may be used for angular insensitive, simple requirements. All our dielectric designs can provide spectrally flat transmittance/reflectance curves over a bandwidth of about 300 nm.
In addition to beam splitters, we also offer a wide range of optical coatings including:
- Highly efficient V Coat & Broadband AR anti reflection coatings, with reflections under 0.5%
- Front surface mirrors providing reflection above 99%
- Infra-red blocking (hot mirrors), edge, bandpass & narrow band filters
Available in infra-red, near infra-red and visible ranges, our optical coatings can be applied to substrates including optical polymers, sapphire and an extensive range of glass types.
Depending on specific deposition processes and designs, these coatings typically meet all common optical specifications’ cosmetic and durability requirements, including MIL-M-13508 & MIL-C-675.
