We describe the design, fabrication, and characterization of mechanically stable, reproducible, and highly reflecting distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) composed of thermally evaporated thin films of calcium fluoride (CaF2) and zinc sulfide (ZnS). CaF2 and ZnS were chosen as the low and high refractive index components of the multilayer DBR structures, with n = 1.43 and n = 2.38 respectively, because neither material requires substrate heating during the deposition process in order to produce optical quality thin films. DBRs consisting of seven pairs of CaF2 and ZnS layers, were fabricated with thicknesses of 96 and 58 nm, respectively, as characterized by high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM), and exhibited a center wavelength of λc = 550 nm and peak reflectance exceeding 99%. The layers showed good adhesion to each other and to the glass substrate, resulting in mechanically stable DBR coatings. Complete optical microcavities consisting of two such DBR coatings and a CaF2 spacer layer between them could be fabricated in a single deposition run. Optically, these structures exhibited a resonator quality factor of Q > 160. When a CaF2/ZnS DBR was grown, without heating the substrate during deposition, on top of a thin film containing the fluorescent dye Rhodamine 6G, the fluorescence intensity showed no degradation compared to an uncoated film, in contrast to a MgF2/ZnS DBR coating grown with substrate heating which showed a 92% reduction in signal. The ability to fabricate optical quality CaF2/ZnS DBRs without substrate heating, as introduced here, can therefore enable formation of low-loss high-reflectivity coatings on top of more delicate heat-sensitive materials such as organics and other nanostructured emitters, and hence facilitate the development of nanoemitter-based microcavity device applications.
Keywords: DBR; calcium fluoride; multilayer coating; thermal evaporation; zinc sulfide.