Abstract: An abrasion-resistant dielectric composite product is described comprising a substrate and an abrasion wear resistant coating material comprising carbon, hydrogen, silicon, and oxygen and a dielectric material. An improved method is provided for the deposition of highly durable and abrasion-resistant multilayer dielectric antireflective coatings and reflective colored mirror coatings onto plastic lenses such as ophthalmic lenses, safety lenses, sunglass lenses, and sports optics. An adhesion-enhancing polymer layer may be deposited onto the plastic substrate prior to deposition of the abrasion-resistant first coating layer. The multilayer dielectric coating structure consists of a transparent, highly abrasion-resistant first coating, and a second dielectric coating composed of at least one layer of dielectric material.

Abstract: An ion beam deposition method is provided for manufacturing a coated substrate with improved wear-resistance, and improved lifetime. The substrate is first chemically cleaned to remove contaminants. Secondly, the substrate is inserted into a vacuum chamber onto a substrate holder, and the air therein is evacuated via pump. Then the substrate surface is bombarded with energetic ions from an ion beam source supplied from inert or reactive gas inlets to assist in removing residual hydrocarbons and surface oxides, and activating the surface. After sputter-etching the surface, a protective, wear-resistant coating is deposited by plasma ion beam deposition where a portion of the precursor gases are introduced into the ion beam downstream of the ion source, and hydrogen is introduced directly into the ion source plasma chamber. The plasma ion beam-deposited coating may contain one or more layers.