Photonics technologies are becoming smaller and more commonly integrated into microelectronic and micromechanical systems. With our dichroic filter-making process, engineers can integrate wavelength-selective filtering structures much earlier into the design process. What's more, because the ion-assisted deposition process delivers multi-layer optical structures directly onto a component, it is no longer necessary to make a physical transition from micron-sized, on-chip structures to macroscopic diced and bonded optical filter elements -- and back again -- for wavelength-selective integrated optoelectronic and opto-mechanical devices.

For example, optical bandpass filters can be deposited directly onto waveguide structures or active photo-detector regions, to create microscopic wavelength-selective detectors. This patterning technology enables a huge variety of product enhancements. Multi-layer RGB color filters can be produced as a single filter array for devices such as CCD camera detectors and LCD display panels, or as a rotating filter wheel for projection display applications. Selected bandpass filters can be combined in arrays for use with multi-spectral detector systems, or patterned in a ring structure in industrial and medical fiber optic instruments. Also, patterned bandpass filters can be used in dense wavelength division multiplexer and photonics-based microprocessor applications. Optical filter coatings can be deposited onto MEMS structures to form "tunable" filter elements, waveguide relays, and switches (from deposited reflector and beamsplitter coatings) on micromechanical mounts.

Ocean Thin Films has pioneered an optical coating technology that provides a precise, cost-effective means to integrate a variety of optical thin film coatings into the design and manufacture of an entirely new generation of opto-mechanical and opto-electronic devices.