Diffusion Bonded Crystals with High Damage Threshold

CaF2 or Calcium Fluoride is a cubic crystal with an excellent transmission from 130 nm to 10 μm and has widespread applications as transparent windows in the ultraviolet and infrared spectra.

Pure YAG Yttrium Aluminum Garnet is a new substrate and window material that can be used for both UV and IR optics. It is particularly useful for high-temperature and high-energy applications. The mechanical and chemical stability of YAG is comparable to sapphire crystal, but YAG is unique with no birefringence which is extremely important for some optical applications.

The Positive Meniscus Lenses are a convex-concave lens, but it is thicker at the center than at the edges. They are felt polished and are used universally in the ophthalmic industry where convention dictates that lens power be specified in Diopters. The Negative Meniscus Lenses are a convex-concave lens, but it is thinner at the center than at the edges. Otherwise description is similar to Plano Concave lenses.  

Ti:Sapphire crystal is the most widely used tunable solid-state laser material combining the supreme physical and optical properties with the extremely broad lasing range. Its lasing bandwidth can support pulses < 10fs making it the crystal of choice for femtosecond mode-locked oscillators and amplifiers. The absorption band of Ti:Sapphire centers at ~ 490 nm so it may be conveniently pumped by various laser sources such as argon ion lasers or frequency doubled Nd:YAG, Nd:YLF, Nd:YVO4 lasers at ~530nm. Laser designers are using Ti:sapphire to generate femtosecond pulses to create new industrial tools. A properly delivered femtosecond laser pulse interacts within the target leaving the surrounding area undisturbed. Newly developed femtosecond pulsed lasers micro-machine complex fine structures in glass, metal and other materials. Active waveguides can be written below the surface, integrating optical devices within the body of a substrate. Defects in photomasks can be repaired without disturbing neighbouring patterns. And it is now possible to achieve cellular resolution in vivo for medical diagnosis with femtosecond pulse lasers.

Corner Cube Prism also called Retroreflector.It has three mutually perpendicular surfaces and a hypotenuse face. Light entering through the hypotenuse is reflected by each of the three surfaces in turn and will emerge through the hypotenuse face parallel to the entering beam regardless of the orientation of the incident beam. For its special performance, it is often used to the distance measurement, optical signal process and laser.

Germanium (Ge) is the preferred lens and window material for high performance infrared imaging systems in the 8–12 um wavelength band.

Dispersion Prisms are used in applications that require separating the incident light into its component wavelengths. For example, when white light enters a Dispersion Prism, it is separated into its three components: red, green, and blue. Dispersion Prisms are ideal for spectroscopy or laser tuning.

Silicon is used as an optical window primarily in the 3 to 5 micron band and as a subsrate for production of optical filters and windows.     Silicon (Si) is grown by Czochralski pulling techniques (CZ) and contains some oxygen that causes an absorption band at 9 microns. To avoid this, material can be prepared by a Float-Zone (FZ) process. Optical silicon is generally lightly doped (5 to 40 ohm cm) for best transmission above 10 microns, and doping is usually boron (P-type) and phosphorus (N-type). After doping silicon has a further pass band: 30 to 100 microns which is effective only in very high resistivity uncompensated material.