Thin Film Materials and Optical Coatings for Advanced Ultraviolet Instrumentation

About the role

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Description

Ultraviolet remote sensing instrumentation requires a wide variety of optical coatings in the design of a complete optical system, ranging from broadband reflective mirror coatings, to many-multilayer, all-dielectric structures for components like dichroic beamsplitters and narrowband filter coatings. Specialty UV coatings operating at wavelengths shorter than 200 nm are not widely available from commercial suppliers and generally require the use of humidity-sensitive materials like LiF, AlF3, and LaF3. This project will support ongoing research at JPL in new methods for the fabrication of these thin film coatings focused on the use of atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE). Such coatings may be deposited on optical components like mirrors and diffraction gratings, or integrated on advanced CCD/CMOS detector systems. Applicants with interest and expertise in thin film coatings and ALD/ALE techniques would support delivery of these components to sub-orbital and orbital space instrumentation and identify new directions for this research. Work would be performed at JPL's Microdevices Laboratory using existing and/or newly constructed vacuum deposition chambers. Possible activities include the development of new ALD and ALE processes, optical characterization of the resulting thin films, electro-optical characterization of detector systems, hardware modification of custom vacuum chambers, and software modification of control systems to support both deposition and characterization.

Location

Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, California

Field of Science

Technology Development

Advisors

John Joseph Hennessy
john.j.hennessy@jpl.nasa.gov
(818) 354-4808

Qualifications

• Doctoral Degree

Benefits

• Unique research opportunities at NASA Centers and Institutes
• Competitive one- to three-year fellowships
• Support for delivery of specialized optical coatings
• Opportunities to develop new ALD and ALE processes
• Electro-optical and hardware characterization capabilities
• Software modification to support deposition and characterization

Pay

N/A

Schedule

N/A

Contact Information

Please email npp@orau.org for questions about this opportunity.

Application Instructions

A complete application to the NASA Postdoctoral Program includes:

• Research proposal
• Three letters of recommendation
• Official doctoral transcript documents