Molecular contaminants outgassed from organic materials used for the spacecraft degrade the performance of optical surfaces of spacecraft. The influence of contaminants outgassed from epoxy resin on the spectral transmittance of the quartz substrate was investigated with an in-situ measurement system. The system can deposit the contaminants on temperature-controlled quartz substrates and the transmittance spectra were measured immediately after deposition in vacuum ambient. We tried to obtain the optical constants of the contaminant using transmittance spectrum and simple optical models for optical calculations. The optical constants were described with a harmonic oscillator model and the effective medium approximation model. This paper reports the in-situ measurement results of transmittance spectra of the epoxy-resin-induced contaminants. In addition, the result of optical calculations using the obtained optical constants were compared to the measurement results.

Date Published: 27 September 2016
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9952, Systems Contamination: Prediction, Control, and Performance 2016, 995208 (27 September 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2237523

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9952:
Systems Contamination: Prediction, Control, and Performance 2016
Joanne Egges; Carlos E. Soares; Eve M. Wooldridge, Editor(s)