A material includes a transparent substrate coated with a stack of thin layers acting on infrared radiation including at least one functional layer. The stack includes a protective coating deposited above at least a part of the functional layer. The protective coating includes at least one lower protective layer based on titanium and zirconium, these two metals being in the metal, oxidized or nitrided form, and at least one upper protective layer of carbon, within which layer the carbon atoms are essentially in an sp.sup.2 hybridization state, located above the layer based on titanium and zirconium.

The object is to provide a mask blank substrate, a mask blank, and a transfer mask which can achieve easy correction of a wavefront by a wavefront correction function of an exposure apparatus. The further object is to provide methods for manufacturing them.

A virtual surface shape, which is an optically effective flat reference surface shape defined by a Zernike polynomial, is determined, wherein the Zernike polynomial is composed of only terms in which the order of variables related to a radius is second or lower order and includes one or more terms in which the order of the variables related to a radius is second-order; and the mask blank substrate, in which difference data (PV value) between the maximum value and the minimum value of difference shape between a virtual surface shape and a composite surface shape obtained by composing respective surface shapes of two main surfaces is 25 nm or less, is selected.

A material includes a transparent substrate coated with a stack of thin layers including at least one silver-based functional metal layer. The stack includes a dielectric layer based on silicon and/or aluminum nitride located above a silver-based functional metal layer and an upper protective layer based on zirconium titanium oxide located above the dielectric layer based on silicon and/or aluminum nitride and exhibiting a ratio by weight of titanium to zirconium Ti/Zr of between 60/40 and 90/10.

Provided are an oxide sintered compact whereby low carrier density and high carrier mobility are obtained when the oxide sintered compact is used to obtain an oxide semiconductor thin film by a sputtering method, and a sputtering target which uses the oxide sintered compact. This oxide sintered compact contains oxides of indium, gallium, and aluminum. The gallium content is from 0.15 to 0.49 by Ga/(In+Ga) atomic ratio, and the aluminum content is from 0.0001 to less than 0.25 by Al/(In+Ga+Al) atomic ratio. A crystalline oxide semiconductor thin film formed using this oxide sintered compact as a sputtering target is obtained at a carrier density of 4.0×10.sup.18 cm.sup.−3 or less and a carrier mobility of 10 cm.sup.−2V.sup.−1sec.sup.−1 or greater.

A material includes a glass sheet, one of the faces of which includes a first zone and a second zone, only the first zone being coated with a layer of opaque mineral paint obtained from a water-based paint composition including pigments and an aqueous solution of alkaline silicate, the layer of mineral paint and the second zone of the glass sheet being coated with a thin layer stack including at least one electrically conductive thin layer.

An article includes a substrate that is transparent, the substrate being covered on at least one of its faces, totally or partly, with a protective layer based on zirconium and aluminum mixed oxide.

A coated substrate having a coating and a method of forming the same is disclosed, wherein the coating includes a plurality of discrete layers. The coating includes three reflective layers, an alloy layer disposed between two of the reflective layers, and two oxide layers and has a total thickness of 4000 Å or less.

Methods and devices for producing a composite pane having a functional coating are presented. The functional coating is applied to part of a surface of a base pane, and a first pane is cut out from the base pane while introducing a frame-shaped peripheral coating-free region into the functional coating having an inner region that is not adjacent a side edge of the first pane. The surface of the first pane with the functional coating is then bonded via a thermoplastic intermediate layer to a surface of a second pane.

The invention relates to a glass substrate for chemical strengthening where a surface is coated by magnetron sputtering with a temporary thin film that reduces the extent of ion exchange upon chemical strengthening and where the temporary thin film can be removed after the chemical strengthening by treatment with an etchant solution. Other embodiments relate to a method for making a chemically strengthened glass substrate with controlled curvature comprising: providing a substrate with opposed surfaces that are durable to a given etchant solution, forming a temporary thin film upon at least part of a surface of the glass substrate, chemically strengthening the glass substrate bearing the temporary thin film, and removing the temporary thin film after said chemical strengthening with said etchant solution. The thickness of the temporary thin film is chosen such that a controlled curvature is obtained upon chemical strengthening.

The present invention relates to the technical field of head-up display, and particularly relates to a head-up display system for an automobile. The head-up display system comprises a projection light source and laminated glass, and further comprises a transparent nanofilm; said film comprises at least two dielectric layers and at least one metallic layer; the projection light source is used for generating p-polarized light; the p-polarized light is incident on a surface of an internal glass panel distal to an intermediate film, said light having an angle of incidence of 42 to 72 degrees, such that the transparent nanofilm can reflect part of the incident p-polarized light.