Several tough and flexible fluorinated polyamide-imide films were prepared from trimellitic anhydride chloride and 2,2'-bis(trifluoromethyl)benzidine through a facile one-pot in-situ silylation method. By incorporating fluorinated side groups, the solubility of the prepared polyamide-imide was greatly enhanced. Meanwhile, due to their linear chain configuration and the existence of hydrogen bonding, the prepared polyamide-imide films revealed high tensile strength, high tensile modulus, high glass transition temperature (Tg) and most interestingly, very low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 11 ppm/°C. Copolymerization with pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) led to an extremely low CTE of 4 ppm/°C which should be among the lowest values available for soluble polyamide-imides. The optical homogeneity and stress homogeneity of the obtained polyamide-imide films were also tested. After non-contact with substance and thermal treatment at 300°C, they revealed a better optical homogeneity and stress homogeneity than that of the commercially available Kapton polyimide (PI) films, with a PV value of 0.915 λ and RMS value of 0.163 λ. Thus, these colorless and soluble polyamide-imide films simultaneously possessing promising optical imaging performance are good candidates as novel diffractive membrane optical system architectures. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.