Patent Application
20090034081
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vacuum evaporation method for forming a multi-layer film filter on a plastic optical component and a multi-layer film filter optical image-capturing assembly with the plastic component, and more particularly to replacing the filters of various miniaturized plastic optical image-capturing assemblies.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the miniaturization and precisation of the consumer electronic products, such as the digital camera, mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), CD-ROM, multi-function video camera, or even the TV game etc, the optical image-capturing assembly will be required with higher performance. Therefore, the future designed and developed optical image capturing assembly must meet the requirements of both the miniaturization and the high resolution.
Referring to
In the same way, in order to meet the wavelength requirement of the optical image component, other consumer electronic products with the optical component are also equipped with other types of multi-layer filters. For example, the IR motion sensor must include an IR penetrating filter to block the visible light and let the infrared rays penetrate only, the CD-ROM reader head must include a polarizer and a spectroscope to make the specific polarized laser light shuttle in the optical path, and the multi-function projector must include the primary color filter of red, green and blue to split the white visible light into the three primary colors of red, green and blue for processing the image.
The principle of the abovementioned multi-layer film is that, by making use of the films with different refractive indexes, with the specific layer quantity and thickness, the light with specific wavelength can be filtered by the way of optical wave interference. Based on the symmetrical film theory put forward by L. I Epstein in 1952, the film H with high refractive index and the film L with lower-refractive index satisfy the relation:
(s represents the cycle) first, and then adjusting the film thickness according to the required specification can form the specific layers and thickness.
As to the fabrication of the multi-layer filter, it is to pile up multiple layers of filter films 122 on a large glass substrate by the physical vacuum evaporation way and continue with the manufacture process like cutting, edge-trimming and cleaning, then the multi-layer film filter can be finished. It is to be noted that, in order to achieve the objective of filtering the light within a certain wavelength range, the number of layers of the multi-layer optical filter films is usually more than 40.
As known from the abovementioned conventional technology, the multi-layer film filter can meet the requirements of the different performances of the optical component. However, based on the Snell's law, the glass substrate of the multi-layer film filter will cause the increase of the total optical path length. Since the optical path length is in inverse proportion to the refractive index in medium, namely, the optical path length is shortened in the glass substrate. Since the total optical path length of the imaging system is invariable, the optical path length shortened in the glass substrate must be added in the optical component to keep the total optical path length invariable. Such a result indicates that the volume of optical component will be increased due to the use of the multi-layer film filter. It goes against the optical image-capturing assembly which requires to be lighter, thinner, shorter and smaller continuously.
In addition, considering the cost, the use of the multi-layer film filter consequentially increases the material cost of the optical image-capturing assembly. One solution is to directly deposit the multi-layer optical filter film on the glass optical component by the evaporation method. Considering the high cost of the glass optical component, the multi-layer optical filter film is expected to be directly deposited on the plastic optical component by the evaporation method. However, because the operation temperature of the evaporation source easily exceeds 2500° C., and the layer quantity of the multi-layer optical filter film is often more than 40, the temperature of the substrate exposed in the high temperature environment for a long time is to be between 250° C. and 350° C. Such a high temperature is helpful to form the tight film structure, but it cannot be applied to the plastic substrate whose softening temperature is from 80° C. to 150° C.
The present invention has arisen to mitigate and/or obviate the afore-described disadvantages.
Considering the abovementioned conventional optical image-capturing assembly, and under the limitation of the cost of the optical image-capturing assembly, the applicant of the present invention has developed a vacuum evaporation method for forming a multi-layer film filter on a plastic optical component and a multi-layer film filter optical image-capturing assembly with the plastic optical component.
The multi-layer filter film is directly evaporated on one of the plastic optical components of the optical image-capturing assembly to replace the multi-layer film filter which uses the glass as the substrate. The optical image-capturing assembly of the present invention is unnecessary to be equipped with multi-layer film filter additionally, thus not only saving the raw material and the assembly cost of the optical image-capturing assembly, but also effectively reducing the volume of the optical image-capturing assembly.
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide a vacuum evaporation method for forming a multi-layer film filter on a plastic optical component and a multi-layer film filter optical image-capturing assembly with the plastic optical component. On the plastic optical component is directly deposited multi-layer filter film by vacuum evaporation method to replace the multi-layer film filter, so that the volume of the optical image-capturing assembly is reduced.
In order to achieve the abovementioned objective, on the plastic optical component is directly formed multiple layers of filter films including the films with high refractive index and the films with low refractive index by the vacuum evaporation method. According to the requirements, the multi-layer filter film can be applied onto any predetermined plastic optical component, so as to effectively reducing the volume of the optical image-capturing assembly.
The second objective of the present invention is to provide a vacuum evaporation method for forming a multi-layer film filter on a plastic optical component and a multi-layer film filter optical image-capturing assembly with the plastic component. Under the premise that the plastic optical component is not affected by the temperature, a fine multi-layer filter film can be formed by the vacuum evaporation method.
As known from the conventional optical image-capturing assembly, high temperature severely affects the plastic optical component. In order to prevent the plastic optical component from being affected by the high temperature, the present invention restricts the vacuum evaporation time of each film not more than 4 minutes to reduce the heating effect from evaporation source to the plastic optical component. Increasing the distance between the evaporation source and the plastic optical component can reduce the heat received by the plastic optical component. Thereby, the present invention restricts the distance between the evaporation source and the plastic optical component more than 100 centimeters to avoid excessive heat transmitted to the plastic optical component from the evaporation source.
However, even though the abovementioned protect measures are used to prevent the plastic optical component from being affected by the evaporation source, there is still part of the heat of the evaporation source to be transmitted to the plastic optical component. Thereby, the present invention restrict that, each layer of film should stand for one to four minutes after being evaporated, so as to make the plastic optical component release the heat received form the evaporation through heat radiation. It is to be noted that, as long as the absolute temperature of the object is greater than 0, the object has the heat radiation effect, namely, the vacuum evaporation apparatus is also a heat radiation source which cannot be neglected. The greater the heat radiation difference between the plastic optical component and the vacuum evaporation apparatus is, the better the radiation cooling effect is. Hence, during the evaporation operation, the cooling water whose temperature is lower than 25° C. is used to cool the vacuum evaporation apparatus, so as to reducing the radiation heat released by the vacuum evaporation apparatus, thus facilitating accelerating the radiation cooling effect of the plastic optical component.
Though the abovementioned measures, the temperature of the plastic optical component is controlled to be lower than 80° C. The low temperature evaporation process has bad influence on the tightness and the adhesion of the multi-layer filter film, so the ion assisted deposition must be applied to improve the tightness and the adhesion of the multi-layer filter film during the vacuum evaporation process.
Appendix I shows the test result of the conventional optical image-capturing assembly and the optical image-capturing assembly in accordance with the present invention; and
Appendix II shows another test result of the conventional optical image-capturing assembly and the optical image-capturing assembly in accordance with the present invention.
The present invention will be clearer from the following description when viewed together with the accompanying drawings, which show, for purpose of illustrations only, the preferred embodiment in accordance with the present invention.
Referring to
The vacuum evaporation method for forming a multi-layer film filter on a plastic optical component is to apply the multiple layers of filter films (IR cut film 30) onto a surface of a predetermined plastic optical component 21. The evaporation time of each layer of film is not more than four minutes. The distance between the evaporation source and the plastic optical component 21 is more than 100 centimeters. Each layer of film should stand for one to four minutes after being evaporated to control the temperature of the plastic optical component 21 lower than 80° C., and carry out the ion assisted deposition. The optical image-capturing assembly needn't to be equipped with the IR cut filter.
As shown in
As shown in
Finally, please refer to appendix I, II together, the present invention applied to substituting the IR cut filter is compared with the conventional optical image-capturing assembly. Focusing on the function comparison between them, the practical image-capturing test will be carried out by the conventional image capturing assembly (left image in appendix I) and the optical image-capturing assembly of the present invention (right image in appendix II) together with the same sensor module. Appendix I shows that the two optical image-capturing assemblies take a photo of an uniform black light respectively, based on the analysis of the photos, there are no difference between the two optical image-capturing assemblies, no matter in illumination distribution or intensity distribution of RGB (red, green, blue). In addition, in the test of taking a photo of a color panel (as shown in Appendix II), the two optical image-capturing assemblies are the same in color and luster and the resolution of the 24 colors in the color panel.
While we have shown and described various embodiments in accordance with the present invention, it is clear to those skilled in the art that further embodiments may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 096128745 | Aug 2007 | TW | national |
