For 50 years considerable effort has been, and still is directed to the production of optical coatings using liquid deposition route. The sol-gel process investigated at CEA (French Commission for Atomic Energy) is well developed to afford coating mineral substrates with colloidal oxide-based materials and/or inorganic-organic composites and/or hybrids. To date, CEA sol-gel lab has developed narrow and broadband antireflective coatings, multilayered dielectric mirrors and few polarizing thin films. These coatings have demonstrated adequate performance for use in the proposed 1.8 MJ/500 TW (351nm) Nd: glass laser devoted to internal confinement fusion program. The technology offers outstanding technical and economical advantages over the most common Physical Vapor Deposition method.
