Ultra-dark nanostructured surface treatment

A manufacturing process for nanostructured ultradark coatings will be developed that will enable a rapid transition of the technology to fielded Department of Defense optical systems. The process will leverage the successful Phase I effort that demonstrated the application of ultradark coatings on aluminum surfaces that had less than 1% reflectance for wavelengths between 300 nm and 10 m. During the Phase II program process controls will be improved to ensure uniform reflectance properties over large area coatings on both exterior and interior surfaces of solid objects. The coatings will be applied to other materials including steel, glass and plastic to demonstrate the versatility of the technology. The coatings applied to these materials will be demonstrated to have the same optical reflectance properties as the Phase I coatings on aluminum. The nanostructured ultradark coatings will be shown to be mechanically and environmentally robust per Department of Defense (DoD) standards and a Phase III transition plan will be implemented in cooperation with our commercial partners. During Phase III we anticipate using the processes and methods developed during Phase II to apply nanostructured ultradark coatings to components used in a current DoD optical system.