optique

Chemical reactions are determined at their most fundamental level by their respective electronic structure and dynamics. Steered by a stimulus such as light irradiation, electrons rearrange themselves in liquids or solids. This process takes only a few hundred attoseconds, whereby one attosecond is the billionth part of a billionth of a second.

Thin-film optics is the branch of optics that focuses on thin, structured layers of different materials. These layers range from a fraction of a nanometer up to several micrometers thick but are usually in the order of the wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which is about 500nm. Their synthesis is controlled via deposition, with one or more layers of material layered onto the substrate, usually via physical vapor deposition.