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Large scale F-doped SnO2 coating was carried out on a glass production line by a cheap in-house spray pyrolysis coater. The coater was installed on glass annealing lehr which has a width of ∼2 m. The solution for film formation consisted of SnCl4·5H2O and NH4F dissolved in a solvent. The solution was sprayed by pressure spray nozzles downward to underneath hot glass sheet. The coating was done for 150 s where the glass temperature was in a range of 430–450 °C. The total length of the coated glass was ∼10 m. It was found by sheet resistance measurement that the coating started non-uniformly and then it covered the entire width of glass when spraying time approached 150 s. The lowest sheet resistance of the coated glass was 0.8 kΩ/□ where the film thickness was ∼80 nm which corresponds to film resistivity of ∼6.4 × 10− 3 Ω-cm.

By incorporating an achromatic three-reflection quarter-wave retarder in a spectroscopic ellipsometer and applying appropriate calibration and error correction procedures it has been possible to characterize fully real fluoride and oxide optical coatings which are truly inhomogeneous. The refractive index and its dispersion with wavelength as well as the depth profile of voids in the films have been determined for AlF 3 , CeF 3 , HfF 4 , LaF 3 , ScF 3 , YF 3 , Al 2 O 3 , HfO 2 , Sc 2 O 3 , ThO 2 , Y 2 O 3 , and ZrO 2 films on vitreous silica substrates

Spectroscopic ellipsometry has been utilized to non-destructively depth profile multi-ion beam reactively sputtered lead zirconate titanate films. Some degree of inhomogeneity (in the form of low density layers or surface roughness) was found in all of the films examined. The evolution in the structure and microstructure of such films during post-deposition annealing was investigated with in situ spectroscopic ellipsometry. It was found that the onset of microstructural inhomogeneities was associated with the crystallization of the perovskite phase, and that the final film microstructure was dependent on the details of the annealing process. A model was developed to approximate the effect that local density variations play in determining the net electrical properties of ferroelectric films. Depending on the configuration of the embedded porosity, it was demonstrated that microstructural inhomogeneities can significantly change the net dielectric constant, coercive field, and remanent polarization of ferroelectric films. It has also been shown that low density regions near the film/substrate interface can result in apparent size effects in ferroelectric films.