Hard infrared black coating with very low outgassing

Infrared astronomical instruments require absorptive coatings on internal surfaces to trap scattered and stray photons. This is typically accomplished with any one of a number of black paints. Although inexpensive and simple to apply, paint has several disadvantages. Painted surfaces can be fragile, prone to shedding particles, and difficult to clean. Most importantly, the vacuum performance is poor. Recently a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process was developed to apply thick (30 &mu;m) diamond-like carbon (DLC) based protective coatings to the interior of oil pipelines. These DLC coatings show much promise as an infrared black for an ultra high vacuum environment. The coatings are very robust with excellent cryogenic adhesion. Their total infrared reflectivity of < 10% at normal incidence approaches that of black paints. We measured outgas rates of <10^-12 Torr liter/sec cm², comparable to bare stainless steel.