Photonic Cleaning Technologies

First Contact™ cleans surfaces better than other processes available to mirror coaters. Currently accepted procedures to clean large mirrors are extremely manual, dependent on the skill level of the cleaning team, and subject to recontamination of the mirror. First Contact™ is easy to use and the polymer film protects against recontamination right to the moment it is removed from the mirror. In other words, coaters can clean the mirror at any convenient time by coating it with First Contact™ and place it into the coating chamber on a schedule that is convenient for them. Other preparation steps or interruptions will not affect the cleanliness of the mirror in the chamber. Greg Barrick led a team at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, to study First Contact™ in glass preparation prior to coating. They found that First Contact™ polymers perform as predicted yielding better coatings in terms of reduced pinholes, reduced surface roughness, and possibly better reflectance. Read the paper here: Experiments using First Contact Polymer as a final cleaning step for alumuminizing

Big first surface mirrors are, despite their large size, delicate optics. Blowing grit, animal droppings, humidity, moisture, accidental contact are all real threats to these precise and delicate instruments. First Contact is an excellent protective material as well as unmatched cleaning product for these expensive, critical optical systems components. Read about the Western Range Depot Optics Group's experience with First Contact as it was printed in Defense Tech Briefs, vol 2 no 2, April 2008.

Cleaning and Protecting Large Mirrors; DTB; v 2,no 2, April, 2008