Coated Glass

A bare glass surface reflects about 4% of light at each face, picks up fingerprints in seconds, and does nothing to control which wavelengths pass through. Coatings fix that. A thin film - sometimes just a few hundred nanometers thick - can cut reflection to under 0.5%, scatter light to eliminate glare, repel oils so the surface stays clean, make the glass electrically conductive, bounce selected wavelengths back, or pass only a narrow band through. The coating turns a plain pane of glass into a functional optical component.

What you can do with coated glass depends on three things: the coating material, the deposition process, and the substrate underneath. The six coating families below cover the most common functions. Further down the page we explain the processes we use to apply them and what substrates they work on, followed by a specifications table so you can compare performance side by side.

The coating process decides what films you can deposit, how durable and uniform they are, and what substrates they'll work on. We run three main routes:

PVD and magnetron sputtering deposit hard, dense films by knocking atoms off a target in a vacuum and landing them on the glass. This is the route for ITO, metal mirrors, multi-layer AR stacks, and precision optical filter coatings where thickness control to the nanometer matters. The films are durable and environmentally stable, and we coat flat glass, discs, and pre-cut parts.

Sol-gel dip and spin coating deposits a porous or graded-index film from a liquid precursor and cures it thermally. It's the standard for single-layer AR on large panels — solar cover glass, display covers, and architectural glass — where full-vacuum deposition isn't practical at scale. The coating is softer than a sputtered film but handles well once cured.

Spray and roll coating applies functional layers like AF and anti-soiling at high speed on a production line. These are thin, often monomolecular films designed for surface chemistry rather than optics — repelling oils, reducing friction, or resisting fouling.

Substrate preparation matters as much as the coating itself. Any dust, oil, or surface defect under the film shows up as a coating defect on top of it. We clean substrates through ultrasonic wash, plasma activation, or chemical treatment depending on the material. We coat soda-lime float, borosilicate, fused quartz, and optical glass, and we can work with glass that's already been cut, edged, tempered, or shaped — as long as the surface is clean and flat enough for the process.