I looking for ways to coat the lenses of my glasses with a thin layer of gold, the same way tht NASA used to do with the astronaut's visors. I found this post by Carlos: Why does NASA use gold foil on equipment and gold-coated visors?
In which he talks about gold being layered onto the polycarbonate visor. My question is what process can do that and is it possible for me to do on my own?
typically, metals like gold are applied by a process called sputtering, this takes place in a vacuum chamber and is used to apply thin layers of different metals to silicon wafers from which chips are made. sputtering processes have been developed in which the workpiece can be plastic instead of silicon. eyeglass manufacturers offer sputter-metallized plastic lenses but when last I looked into this, their processes were carefully-guarded trade secrets. a sputtering machine (also called a metal dep machine) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; the sputtering target (the gold slab from which atoms are knocked loose) alone costs tens of thousands of dollars- so no, this is not something you could do in your garage shop unless it is a lot better equipped than mine is.
