Low Temperature Preparation of High Refractive Index and Mechanically Resistant Sol-gel TiO2 Films for Multilayer Antireflective Coating Applications

TiO₂ sol-gel thin films have attracted a large attention for applications which require high refractive index transparent layers. In this work, sol-gel TiO₂ layers were prepared by Aerosol-gel deposition followed by a thermal treatment procedure in air. Depending on the experimental conditions, abrasion resistant and high refractive index layers could be obtained after post-treatment at only 110°C. In this paper, the experimental parameters which allow the preparation of functional TiO₂ sol-gel layers at such low temperature are discussed. It is concluded that the preparation of high refractive index and mechanically resistant TiO₂ layers can be interpreted in terms of competition between polycondensation and densification mechanisms. This result allows to envisage the sol-gel processing at low temperature of multilayer antireflective coatings.