Products

Spherical Lenses

  

Spherical lenses can be used to focus a beam, form an image, and collimate or expand a beam of light. At Solid Photon Inc, we routinely manufacture lenses with high surface quality and accuracy, and have extensive experience in delivering high laser damage threshold optics. However, we also understand the importance of balancing cost and performance for less demanding applications that still require precision and well controlled manufacturing. That is why our extensive line of catalog products includes lenses in a broad range of shapes, materials, focal lengths and diameters, with different quality levels to address the various performance requirements of our customers. We have the knowledge to understand your needs and supply the best component for your application: not over-specified, with the right quality and cost.

If you are unable to find a perfect fit within our line of catalog products, we encourage you to call us to discuss a custom solution. We have experience working with a variety of other materials using conventional, diamond turning, and molded fabrication techniques. We can manufacture a lens with the right combination of shape, radius of curvature, diameter, and tolerances to meet your exact requirements for OEM or laboratory use.
High quality antireflection coatings are essential for maximum throughput and power handling, and ours are among the best. We offer a wide range of BBAR and V-coats, and custom coatings. To achieve highest laser damage threshold, we typically recommend V-coat antireflection coatings on laser-grade 10-5 fused silica substrates.

Capabilities

  Standard Custom Options
Types  Plano-convex, plano-concave, 
biconvex, biconcave, bestform, molded aspheric condenser 		 Meniscus, ball, precision aspheric lenses 
Materials  N-BK7, UV-grade fused silica, excimer grade fused silica, UV-grade CaF2, N-SF11, crown glass Other optical glasses, fused silica and fused quartz, CaF2 , MgF2, sapphire
Diameter  2.5 to 76.2 mm Polished: up to 600 mm 
Molded: 0.3 to 55 mm 
Diamond turned: up to 250 mm
Focal length  3.0 mm to 10.0 m 
-10.0 mm to -1.0 m		  
Coatings 
  • Narrowband V-coat AR
  • Dual wavelength (1064/532)
  • Broadband Multilayer
  • Single layer MgF2 AR
  • Other wavelengths (193-2100nm)
  • Triple-V AR coating
  • Ultra-low reflectivity
  • Mirror coating
Quality  Standard and laser quality See manufacturing tolerances below

Spherical Lens Manufacturing Capabilities**

Surface Tolerances Commercial Laser Quality High Precision
Surface quality (scratch - dig) 60 - 40  10 - 5*  5 - 2 
Surface roughness (Å, RMS) 20  5  2.5 
Surface Irregularity 
(waves, P-V @ 633 nm)		 λ/2 λ/10 λ/20
Surface Power 
(waves, P-V @ 633 nm) 		 λ/2 λ/10 λ/20
Dimensional Tolerances Commercial Precision High Precision
Diameter (mm) +0.000 / -0.250 +0.000 / -0.050 +0.000 / -0.015
Center thickness (mm) ± 0.250 ± 0.050 ± 0.015
Spherical radius (fringes) 5  3  < 3 
Centration (edge thickness variation, mm) 0.05 0.015 0.005
Clear aperture (%) 85% 90% 95%
* This is for the most well behaved materials, like fused silica and N-BK7.  Softer materials like CaF2 and N-SF11 are manufactured with 20-10 laser grade surface quality.

Molded and Diamond Turned Manufacturing Capabilities**

Surface Tolerances Typical Molded High Precision Molded Typical Diamond Turned High Precision Diamond Turned
Surface quality 
(scratch - dig)		 40 - 20 20 - 10 40 - 20 10 - 5
Surface Texture, per ISO-10110-8 P2 P3 P2 P3
Surface roughness (Å, RMS) 30  7  10 - 70  5 
Surface Irregularity 
(waves, P-V @ 633 nm)		 λ/4 λ/20 λ/4 λ/20
Surface Power 
(waves, P-V @ 633 nm)		 λ λ/20 λ/4 λ/20
Dimensional Tolerances Typical Molded High Precision Molded Typical Diamond Turned High Precision Diamond Turned
Diameter (mm) +0.000 / -0.100 +0.000 / -0.020 +0.000 / -0.020 +0.000 / -0.005
Center thickness (mm) ± 0.050 ± 0.020 ± 0.050 ± 0.005
Wedge (arc seconds) 60  10  30  10 
Clear aperture (after edging) 90%  98%  90%  98% 
** Note: The general tolerance specifications above are intended to guide determination of appropriate tolerances based both on relative cost and manufacturability.  Part-specific tolerances will vary depending on size, material, shape and aspect ratio.  Tighter tolerances may be possible, so please contact us to discuss your custom specifications.  All specifications do not need to be from a single column, though trade-offs may be required in order to meet the desired combination of cost and performance.