HPF™ fluorescence filters are manufactured using our patented Stabilife^® coating technology. They are manufactured using two patented processes for the deposition of metal oxide thin film optical coatings: Reactive Ion Plating (RIP) and Hybrid Plasma Enhanced Deposition (HPED). Both processes yield highly dense, thin film coatings with extraordinary hardness, abrasion resistance, and adhesion to the substrate. Newport's Stabilife processes have been in full-scale production at our coating facility in Franklin, Massachusetts since the early 1990s.

For demanding applications such as fluorescence detection, wavelength stability is absolutely critical to insure dependable results. Newport's fluorescence filters with Stabilife coating technology have much higher spectral stability than competitors. One of the critical factor affecting the spectral stability of an optical coating is film density. Unlike competitor's unstabilized metal oxide thick film coating with less film density which typically contributes to environmentally induced spectral shift of 2-5%, Newport's Stabilife coatings have a much higher density and lower void ratio and are therefore less affected by water absorption. They typically exhibit total wet-to-dry shifts of less than 0.02% of wavelength.

Stabilife coatings are typically 5 to 10 times less sensitive to thermal variation than un-stabilized metal oxide films as a result of film densification. Temperature change functions are a catalyst for moisture migration in thin films having a significant volume of voids. When un-stabilized films are exposed to high temperatures, moisture migrates out of film voids contributing to the wavelength change discussed earlier. The high film density and reduced permeability resulting from the Stabilife processes reduces this effect providing the maximum spectral stability available for all types of precision coatings including bandpass, dichroic, edge, notch and polarizer coatings.