Research
We study the light that reflects off glass.
About four percent of the light meeting an uncoated air-to-glass surface reflects straight back. A single pane has two such surfaces, so roughly eight percent is lost before any of it reaches what lies behind.
Our work focuses on the coatings that lower this figure, and the conditions under which they hold.
01
Interference coatings
We design thin-film coatings: layers a fraction of a wavelength thick, deposited on glass so that the light reflected from each boundary largely cancels out.
Most anti-reflection coatings are tuned for one wavelength and for light arriving near head-on. We work on how low reflectance can be pushed across the whole visible range, and across a wide span of viewing angles.
02
Durability under measurement
Each coating is first measured for reflectance and transmittance, wavelength by wavelength and angle by angle.
The same sample is then abraded, held at high humidity, cycled through temperature, and cleaned repeatedly — and measured again. We record how far its performance drifts, and how fast.
03
What we have found
Reflectance from a treated surface can be brought well below the four percent of bare glass.
Holding that reduction across wide angles and the full visible spectrum is harder than reaching it at a single wavelength. In our testing, durability rather than peak performance sets the limit.
What we don't yet know
We do not yet have a coating that keeps reflectance low across every angle and wavelength while surviving years of handling.
Which layer structures come closest, and why some degrade faster than others, is the work in front of us now.
Where this stands today
Polgaze is developing coatings that reduce reflection at the air-glass surface. The work today is in material synthesis and coating design.
The next milestone is proof-of-concept testing: measuring how coated samples perform, and comparing those results with what the coating design predicts.