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 The project was executed in cooperation with Schott
Rohrglas GmbH, Mitterteich, a subsidiary company of the Schott Glas
Group, Mainz, which is active all over the world. Schott Glas had
filed an application for a patent on the development, designated as
"Glass body with porous coating", with the inventors in Clausthal,
Dipl.-Ing. Marta Krzyzak, Dr.-Ing. Gundula Helsch, Privatdozent Dr.
habil. Gerhard Heide, and Prof. Dr. Günther H. Frischat, in Europe,
the USA, Israel, Japan, and China.
Broad-band antireflection coatings had already been
available before, of course, but the insufficient adhesion strength
and wiping resistance on borosilicate glass proved to be decisive
disadvantages. The coatings did not withstand the rough operation in
practice, and the desired effect was no longer present after a short
time. The porous silicon dioxide coatings developed at the Technical
University of Clausthal, with a thickness of only 110 nanometres (1
nanometre equals one millionth of a millimetre), are applied by the
sol-gel dip coating method and burned into the glass at 500 °C. In
comparison with other methods of application, the advantage offered by
the sol-gel method is the possibility of flawlessly coating the inside
of glass tubes, not only sheet glass. A specially developed sol-gel
formulation imparts the adhesion strength and wiping resistance to the
antireflection coating. Schott Rohrglas has continued the development
from the laboratory scale to the production stage: Glass tubes with an
antireflection coating and a length of four metres have already been
installed in modern solar power stations and are being tested in
California. |
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