Modeling reflection on coated steel surfaces

A growing trend in architecture and design is the use of steel. For those applications the visual appearance of the surface is of primordial importance. In this research we model the reflection of light on a rough steel surface, coated with a transparent polymer layer. A number of optical non-destructive techniques were used to determine the roughness (AFM, white light scattering interferometry) and optical constants (spectroscopic ellipsometry) of the samples. AFM measurements were used to determine whether this polymer layer followed the roughness of the substrate or had a roughness all of its own. Using the Modeled Integrated Scattering Tool (MIST) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) we were able to calculate the reflection of these surfaces and compare them to experimental reflections measured by scatterometry.