Micro-optics are extremely small optical systems, measuring between a few micrometers and a millimeter. They comprise optical fibers with microscale core diameters, small diffractive optical components, micro-optical mirrors, prisms, and lens arrays.
Shanghai Optics manufactures a wide selection of custom micro-optics, and they can collaborate with users to design and build micro-optic lens assemblies that fit unique requirements.
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Applications of Micro-Optics in Modern Optical Systems
Shanghai Optics provides micro-optical components to a wide range of industries and applications. Micro-optics are essential components of many contemporary optical systems. Micro-sized optics with strict standards are needed for industrial production, medical and biophotonics, materials processing, aerospace and defense, and industrial production.
These extremely small optical components are crucial to embedded vision and remote sensing systems. Small optics are utilized in robotic surgery, endoscopy, medical laser spectroscopy, and imaging equipment. The popularity of mobile phones with high-quality cameras has raised the demand for small precision lenses and windows that can resist regular handling wear and tear. High-end smartphones come standard with one-time specialty optics like micro sapphire windows.
Types of Micro-Optics
Beam Homogenization on a Micro Level: Microlens Arrays
Usually used for beam homogeneity and shaping, microlens arrays can be combined with lasers or highly powered LEDs. Shanghai Optics can design square arrays for the required lens pitch and focal length and offer them in the conventional 10 mm×10 mm configuration. These arrays are perfect for fiber coupling, laser ablation, and welding; they are frequently employed in pairs.
Fly's eye condenser arrays are appropriate in scenarios requiring a large illuminated field and a short working distance. They are frequently chosen for semiconductor instrumentation, fluorescence microscopy, and medical laser applications. They convert non-uniform light into a consistent irradiance distribution on the illumination plane.
These optical components are made with a two-dimensional array of dual-surface cylindrical microlenses and do not require any adjustment.
Micro Optics for Data Transfer: Fiber Optics
Fiber optics are long, thin strands made of pure, high-quality glass. When strung in bundles (optical cables), they can carry light signals across great distances, allowing data to be processed at light speed.
Optical fibers are made up of three sections. The core is a thin glass center that transmits light. Surrounding it is the cladding, an exterior layer of glass with a higher refractive index that reflects light into the core. The cladding is around 10 times the diameter of the core. A plastic buffer covering surrounds both layers, protecting the fiber.
Laser light is transmitted using single-mode fibers. These feature tiny cores (8-10 microns in diameter) that transmit light directly down the fiber in transverse mode. Single-mode fibers are also used to transmit telephone, cable television, and internet signals.
Infrared light is transmitted using multi-mode fibers with core diameters ranging from 50 to 100 microns. Multi-mode cables are effective for transmitting data over short distances (less than 600 meters), but they are inefficient over longer lengths due to modal dispersion. They are identified by two numbers: their core and cladding diameters. A 62.5/125 μm multi-mode fiber consists of a 62.5 μm core and a 125 μm cladding.
A non-cylindrical core or cladding can produce special-purpose optical fibers.
Shanghai Optics also sells microspheres, which are small, precisely formed spheres composed of solid grade A fine, annealed optical glass. They can be used to transmit images in small spaces, as well as to couple light into or out of fibers. Since each microsphere’s focal point is close to its surface, pressing it against another sphere or microfibre causes nearly full coupling.
In fiber optics, microwaveplates modify the polarization state of the light passing through them. Shanghai Optics offers micro waveplates with a thickness of 0.19 mm and dimensions as small as 0.35×0.35 mm. The crystal quartz used to make these micro waveplates has a 20/10 scratch-dig surface quality.
Micro Optics for Light Direction: Micro Prisms
Additionally, Shanghai Optics produces excellent micro prisms. These prisms are useful for fiber optic applications and can be used as circulators, interleavers, or MEMs. They can also divert light from one optical channel to another. The precision manufacturing of these prisms allows for accurate deviation, and high reflectivity reduces signal loss.
Shanghai Optics manufactures standard right-angle prisms, dove prisms, and penta prisms in micro sizes and can also create unique customized prisms as requested. Right-angle microprisms are often used to reflect image pathways or redirect light at a 90-degree angle. Dove prisms can invert images, and penta prisms deviate light by 90 degrees without inversion.
Micro PBS, or polarization beamsplitter cubes, are used in fiber optics to split a laser beam into its component beams using polarization. These cubes are the core optical components in polarizers and interleavers. They create micro polarization beamsplitter cubes with diameters as small as 0.2 mm.
These tiny optical components are subjected to the most stringent quality testing, and Shanghai Optics guarantees that every micro prism that leaves the facility satisfies all quoted specifications.
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MicroLens for Complex Imaging
Microlenses have a wide range of uses, including coupling light to optical fibers, enhancing light collection of CCD arrays, and focusing light on active parts of an LCD for a digital projector. They are also at the core of small imaging equipment such as photocopiers, smartphone cameras, and 3D imaging and display systems.
They are also crucial to 3D imaging and displays and make up the core of small imaging devices such as photocopiers and smartphone cameras.
Shanghai Optics offers the following microlens:
- Biconvex Microlens
- Plano Convex Microlens
- Biconcave microlens
- Plano Concave Microlens
All of these lenses have been precisely polished to an extremely high quality. The other micro components are subjected to rigorous quality control and must adhere to strict specifications.
Microspheres. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics
Micro Waveplate. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics
PBS. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics
Micro Prism. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics
Microlens Array. Image Credit: Shanghai Optics
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