Aspheric Lenses for Superior Optical Performance

Aspheric lenses are optical components featuringnon-spherical surfaces, unlike traditional spherical lenses. These lenses are used to improve image quality and correct spherical aberration. They are available in a range of shapes. Spherical aberration is one type of imperfection that happens when light travels through a spherical surface.

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Zinc Selenide Aspheric Lenses – Diameter: 10 mm / Thickness: 3 mm. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics Inc.

Light focuses at varying distances depending on how close to the lens' edge it enters, resulting in a blurred image. In contrast, aspheric lenses concentrate light to a single point, regardless of where the light ray arrives, reducing or eliminating visual blurriness.

The figure above shows that spherical aberration occurs when a lens is not capable of focusing all the incident light rays at the exact same point. The aspherical lens is designed to eliminate spherical aberration. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics Inc.

Aspherical lenses reduce spherical aberration and correct other image distortions like astigmatism. Aspheric lenses have been used for many years to minimize spherical aberration and enhance the performance of optical systems, but their expensive cost has hitherto made them impractical for use in practical applications.

Recent manufacturing advancements in aspheric grinding and polishing have permitted sub-aperture polishing and the production of high-precision aspheres at a reasonable cost.

A single, more economical, high-performance aspheric lens can replace numerous spherical lenses with the same or superior performance, resulting in lighter weight, more compact, and less complicated systems at a lower cost than was previously conceivable.

Shanghai Optics designs and manufactures standard and custom aspherical lenses in several industries.

Image Credit: Shanghai Optics Inc.

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What Makes Aspheric Lenses Important?

Precision aspherical lenses decrease visual defects and offer improved images, making them suitable for a variety of applications. Large aspheric lenses are used in telescopes and cameras, but smaller aspheric lenses play critical roles in fiber optic networks, laser devices, and surgical equipment. Aspheric lenses offer the following advantages in practically all applications:

Greater precision: Aspherical lenses generate clearer images by decreasing spherical aberration and concentrating light on a single point, making them excellent for high-precision applications such as laser diode focusing

Increased aperture size: Aspheric lenses enable optical engineers to raise a lens’s numeric aperture size while maintaining image quality, making them ideal for applications requiring high light throughput

Improved efficiency: An aspheric lens can rectify aberrations that would otherwise need many spherical lenses to correct. This characteristic enables a single aspheric lens to replace a complex multi-lens system, resulting in smaller, lighter, more efficient, and cost-effective assemblies.

Furthermore, because the surface shape of an aspheric lens is developed and produced to efficiently decrease aberration in specific applications, custom aspheric lenses offer adaptable solutions to complicated challenges.

How Aspheric Lenses Are Produced

Aspheric Lens Manufacturing Process - Shanghai OpticsPlay

Video Credit: Shanghai Optics Inc.

As with other optical lens types, aspheres can be made in several ways. Shanghai Optics employs state-of-the-art manufacturing and metrology technology to make custom aspheric lenses using two major methods: molding and conventional polishing. Lens molding is used to mass manufacture aspheric lenses that need less accuracy. Using this technique, the heated lens material is poured into custom molds, solidifying and assuming its final form.

Shanghai Optics uses materials with low transformation temperatures, such as plastic, acrylic, BK-7, B270, and Pyrex, to create moldable aspheric lenses, which guarantee success. Molded aspheric lenses are the least expensive variety of aspheres.

Shanghai Optics uses a conventional polishing technique for large silicon aspheric lenses that demand higher accuracy. Thanks to high-speed polishing equipment, they can swiftly shape and refine precision aspheric lenses while meeting precise specifications.

The companymanufactures lenses with best-fit-sphere deviations ranging from a few millimeters to a few waves. Though the production technique users select will be determined by the project needs and the number of lenses needed, users will find that the molded and polished lenses satisfy the highest standards.

The production staff adheres to ISO 9001 standards and uses cutting-edge metrology technology to ensure precise and repeatable testing measures.

Zinc Selenide Aspheric Lens – Diameter: 10 mm / Thickness: 3 mm. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics Inc.

Custom Aspheric Lenses from S.O.

Aspheric lenses provide superior accuracy and image quality compared to unique lenses due to their unique aspheric lens design, which focuses light to a single point. Shanghai Optics has over 55 years of expertise in supplying high-quality precision optical lenses to organizations worldwide.

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