PHOTOGRAPHERS could soon be snapping clearer pictures thanks to a simple
anti-reflective lens coating pioneered by researchers in Germany.
Ullrich Steiner and his colleagues at the University of Konstanz dissolved
polystyrene and polymethyl methacrylate in a solvent and coated a glass slide
with a thin layer of the mixture. The team then removed the polystyrene with
another solvent, leaving 100-nanometre-wide pores in the remaining polymer.
By cutting down reflection, this perforated coating increases the
transmission of light through glass by more than 8 per cent, to a level normally
only obtained by complex multi-layer coatings (Science, vol 283, p
520). This small improvement would be greatly magnified in multiple lens
systems, such as microscopes and zooms.
