The control of the refractive index of laminated coatings consisting of alternating stacks of nanoscale Al2O3 and TiO2 sublayers grown by atomic layer deposition has been achieved. The refractive index of the coating linearly changed from 1.870 to 2.318 as the thickness of the single TiO2 sublayer was varied from 2.0 to 39 A while that of the single Al2O3 sublayer was kept constant at 5.5 Angstrom. The refractive index could be varied by adjusting only the number of growth cycles of each material. This approach will have potential applications to optical multilayer coatings consisting of well-controlled extremely thin layers. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.