AR Plays Catch-Up
Why AR is on the brink of leapfrogging into high usage
By Joseph L. Bruneni

Sales of anti-reflective lenses in this country have lagged well behind AR usage in Europe and Japan, as people in those countries frequently remind their American friends. Currently, sales of AR lenses are approaching 25 percent of all lenses dispensed in the United States. Most of this growth has come during the past five years. Jumping from one or two percent to 25 percent is impressive--until it's compared to Europe's 65 percent. AR sales here look even worse when compared to Japan's 90 percent.

Two things happen when labs install AR equipment:

Turnaround. The first benefit is labs can provide AR lenses in the same turn-around time as non-coated lenses. Shaving two to five days from turnaround time makes a big difference to lab customers and encourages more sales of AR.

Vested interest. The second and more important influence is that labs installing AR equipment start promoting AR coatings to their customers. Installing in-house AR equipment represents an investment of close to half a million dollars. When a lab makes that kind of equipment investment, it wants to maximize its use.

	Most lens manufacturers offer stock lenses with or without AR-coatings PHOTO COURTESY OF ESSILOR

OTHER GROWTH INFLUENCES

There are other issues playing a role in the growing use of AR in this country.

Stock lenses. A basic one has been development of AR-coated stock lenses. Most lens manufacturers now offer stock lenses with or without AR coating, particularly lenses made in a higher index. The time saved with AR-coated stock lenses and the relative ease of edging them have encouraged greater use of AR stock lenses.

The only disadvantage of AR stock lenses is they cannot be tinted. Stock lenses are less expensive than custom-coated lenses and generally have a superior AR coating. There are substantial advantages when coaters can coat hundreds of lenses, each identical except for lens power. They can fine-tune the chemistry of the AR specifically to the chemical composition of the lens itself. That is difficult to do in custom-coating.

The market opportunities anticipated as AR sales continue to grow have encouraged massive investments in research and development to produce improved AR coatings. This advanced R&D includes improved lens substrates, more sophisticated scratch coatings, and better surfacing techniques in laboratories. Each issue has the capacity to directly influence the quality of AR itself: How firmly the coating adheres to the lens, the effectiveness of the coating for reducing reflections, and the ease of keeping the lenses clean (an important factor to wearers) are all important points.

ROLE OF SCRATCH COATINGS

No ingredient is more important to the efficiency of an AR coating than what lies under the AR. In most cases, this includes a scratch coating. With plastic lenses, scratch-coated lenses are preferred because the scratch coating provides a firmer base for AR than a naked lens does. Plastic lenses are porous with a rough and irregular surface when examined at a molecular level. A well-applied scratch coating evens out those irregularities and provides a firmer support for the delicate, thin AR coating.

Scratch coatings can be the Achilles heel for an AR coating. Consider this: If a scratch coating doesn't firmly adhere to the lens substrate, it will slough or wear off over time. When that happens, the AR coating on top of the scratch coating also vanishes. Scratch coating beneath the AR has an enormous influence on the ultimate performance of the AR. As interest in AR has increased, realization of the importance of what lies under it has led to major investments in developing better scratch coatings.

Early AR coatings had a single layer of AR. Performance was minimal, partially eliminating reflections and increasing light transmissions slightly. AR coatings today are multi-layer coatings and consist of five basic layers, not counting a hydrophobic top layer for easier cleaning. In the quest for improved AR coatings, some companies boast AR coatings of as many as 12 layers, plus an easy-clean coat.

DEDICATED COATINGS

Another trend is impacting the field of AR coatings in a major way. As the variety of high index materials continues to proliferate, along with variations in scratch coatings used in labs, several companies have concluded the only way to produce a premier AR coating is to closely control every facet of the lens--from chemical composition of the substrate material and chemicals used in applying the scratch coating to composition of the AR coating itself. There are sound reasons for controlling every aspect of the final AR product.

Custom AR coating of the wide variety of lenses processed in a lab presents real challenges. The average batch going into a lab's AR chamber is made up of a variety of lens materials in a range of refractive indices. Some have no scratch coating, some have factory-applied scratch coating on the front side only, some have factory-applied coating on both sides, and many have lab-applied scratch coatings on the backside. These inconsistencies can be dealt with, but each variation has the capacity of affecting the AR integrity. Producing dedicated AR coatings requires coating one brand of lens with identical scratch coating on both sides of the lens and works best when the AR index precisely matches the substrate index.

Maintaining total control of each aspect of the lens is difficult and costly, but this type of dedicated coating is now available. For patients who want "the best" and are willing to pay for it, a dedicated AR coating may be the way to get maximum efficiency and performance. These specialized coatings are currently only processed in a few lab facilities, but as demand for dedicated premier coatings grow, additional coating facilities are expected.

CONSUMER BRAND IDENTITY

Here is one area that, over time, will probably have the greatest impact on sales of AR lenses in this country. Until recently, most AR lenses have been dispensed simply as "anti-reflective lenses." Laboratories usually enclose a "Handling Brochure" with the AR lenses they process, and these certificates are designed to be passed on to the wearer. Other than this, there has been little effort to market AR lenses to patients under a brand name...until now.

Dispensing generic AR coatings is beginning to change. It's changing partially because some AR lenses carry names that have a high degree of consumer recognition.

	As consumers are shown the glare-reducing impact of AR coatings, right, the lenses gain popularity PHOTOS COURTESY OF SEIKO OPTICAL

One example is Zeiss. Consumers know the name, not because they recognize Zeiss as a leader in AR lenses, but because they recognize it as a name related to quality optics: High-end cameras, telescopes, and microscopes. The company capitalizes on this, and labs that are licensed to use Zeiss AR equipment are permitted to use the Zeiss AR brand name on lenses they produce. Other AR brands have consumer recognition carry-over from non-ophthalmic products. These include names like Seiko, Pentax, and Kodak.

Another name with increasing consumer awareness is Essilor, but not because it already had consumer recognition. In fact, the company has taken a somewhat different approach by building consumer awareness specifically for the brand names of their top-of-the-line AR coatings. On Jan. 13, Essilor launched a major consumer awareness campaign specifically for its Crizal AR.

Industry observers anticipate more AR consumer reach as other companies begin multi-media consumer advertising.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Can current AR technology be improved? The answer is yes, but the quality of currently available AR coatings is good, and they are meeting the expectations of eyewear consumers. The industry's focus is now on how to get more laboratories into processing AR. Simply put, growing AR sales in this country to the level they enjoy in Europe won't happen until more labs have the capacity to produce AR lenses in-house.

Specifically addressing this issue, two major optical manufacturers--Satis Vacuum of America and Essilor Lenses--recently announced a new joint venture during International Vision Expo. The details are what make this new project so interesting. The project involves an advancement in AR technology and includes an important additional agreement that involves branding of AR lenses. These are the details:

Most large laboratories now produce AR in-house. The AR industry's target now is those hundreds of smaller labs that find a half million dollar investment difficult to justify. Satis has produced a new SP-200 coating unit that utilizes a sputter coating technology. Sputtering isn't a new technology, but it does offer some significant advantages to smaller labs. It produces quality AR coatings called NP (for "Neo Process") with less costly equipment and requires considerably less training and experience to operate. Particularly suited to small batches of lenses, the sputtering cycle time is relatively fast.

What is interesting about the new Satis/Essilor NP project is that, for the first time, Essilor will start offering premium quality semi-finished lenses (CR 39 and poly) that have factory-applied Reflection Free NP AR coating on the front surface of the blank. All the lab needs to do is surface the lens and apply AR to the back side only. Labs using the new Satis SP-200 Sputter Coater will apply AR to the back side and sell the lenses as branded Reflection Free AR lenses. Under the new agreement, Essilor plans to eventually also permit labs using the sputtering units to produce the company's top-of-the-line Crizal coatings.

Firms are building AR brand awareness PHOTO COURTESY OF CARL ZEISS OPTICAL

By almost anyone's definition, the future for AR lenses is now. The performance and efficiency of AR coatings currently being produced is superior to those of just a few years ago. Patient dissatisfaction with AR is mostly a thing of the past. Dispensers still hear grumbling about the difficulty of keeping AR lenses clean but few patients are willing to give up AR to eliminate that minor nuisance.

Not long ago, selling scratch coating on plastic lenses required a considerable selling effort by the dispenser. Today, many plastic lenses come only with factory-applied scratch coating. Many retail offices are routinely recommending AR to their patients, and some even include the cost of AR in the fees they quote for premium lenses. These trends, combined with the growing number of labs producing AR in-house and increased consumer advertising of AR are indicators that the U.S. will catch up with AR sales in Europe and may even surpass their market share.