NASA Postdoctoral Program - Thin Film Materials and Optical Coatings for Advanced Ultraviolet Instrumentation

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on ultraviolet remote sensing instrumentation research, supporting ongoing work at JPL in new methods for the fabrication of thin film coatings using atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE). The project involves developing specialty UV coatings operating at wavelengths shorter than 200 nm, which may be deposited on optical components like mirrors and diffraction gratings, or integrated on advanced CCD/CMOS detector systems. Work would be performed at JPL's Microdevices Laboratory using existing and/or newly constructed vacuum deposition chambers.