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Dreapex TMM Tutorials

Beginner Tutorials

This series is for beginners in thin-film optics. It starts with an antireflection coating on bare glass, then moves through mirrors, filters, beamsplitters, absorption analysis, and phase measurements. Each tutorial combines optical principles, software operation, and result interpretation around one practical result.

Read the tutorials in this order: reflectance, transmittance, and beam splitting → absorption and depth distribution → phase, dispersion, and ellipsometry.

Reflectance, Transmittance, and Beam Splitting

Section titled “Reflectance, Transmittance, and Beam Splitting”
  1. Your First Thin-Film Design: From Bare Glass to Broadband AR
  2. A Mirror Made of Transparent Materials: Design a 99% DBR
  3. Select One Color Between Two Mirrors: A Fabry–Pérot Narrowband Filter
  4. How Do Thickness Errors Shift a Filter? Fabry–Pérot Sensitivity Analysis
  5. Split One Beam into Equal Halves: Design a 45° 50/50 Dielectric Beamsplitter
  6. Separate Blue-Green and Red Light: Design a 45° Dichroic Beamsplitter
  7. Are More Layers Better? Comparing Dichroic Performance and Structural Cost

Absorption and Depth Distribution

Section titled “Absorption and Depth Distribution”
  1. Which Layer Absorbs the Light? Analyze and Optimize an a-Si Thin-Film Solar Cell
  2. Why Does the Optimized a-Si Cell Absorb More Light? Electric Field, Energy Flow, and Absorption Density

Phase, Dispersion, and Ellipsometry

Section titled “Phase, Dispersion, and Ellipsometry”
  1. Effect of a Fabry–Pérot Filter on a Short Pulse: Phase, Delay, and Broadening
  2. How Do Ψ and Δ Reveal Thin-Film Changes? An Introduction to Ellipsometry

The table below summarizes the focus, optical principles, and software work for each tutorial.

Project Optical principles Software skills
Broadband AR Fresnel reflection, optical thickness, destructive interference Structure, Optics, R/T, optimization
DBR mirror Quarter-wave periodic stack, constructive interference, stopband Layer Group, repeat count, spectral validation
Fabry–Pérot filter Multiple-beam interference, resonance, linewidth Mirror-symmetric ordering, fine wavelength step, FWHM
Fabry–Pérot sensitivity Cavity thickness, reflection phase, peak shift Fine-step Sweep, peak, FWHM, Q
45° 50/50 beamsplitter Target reflectance, oblique phase, polarization averaging Point target, s/p and angle Sweep
45° dichroic Oblique incidence, s/p splitting, multi-objective trade-offs Two-band targets, bounds, polarization checks
Dichroic trade-off Pair count, band trade-offs, polarization splitting Candidate optimization, bounds, total-thickness comparison
a-Si thin-film solar cell Complex index, useful and parasitic absorption R/T/A, Layer Absorption, Sweep, optimization
a-Si depth distribution Standing waves, energy-flow decay, local absorption Electric Field, Poynting Vector, Absorption Density
Fabry–Pérot dispersion Transmission phase, group delay, group-delay dispersion Phase, GD, GDD, trusted wavelength range
SiO₂ / Si ellipsometry p/s amplitude ratio, phase difference, thickness sensitivity Ψ, Δ, thickness Sweep

After completing these tutorials, continue to Case Studies and apply the same methods to published devices and more complex coatings.

Going further

Section titled “Going further”

These tutorials cover the operating steps only. The physics behind them, the full parameter reference for each feature, how to read the results, and the algorithm validation all live on the documentation site: