Compression Molding of Refractive and Diffractive Hybrid Glass Lenses

INTRODUCTION Refractive and diffractive hybrid lenses have been designed and implemented for some industrial applications. These optical elements however are limited to low volume production or specific materials such as polymers. Although plastic lenses can be fabricated using injection molding into different geometries at high volume, these optics do not perform well under rigorous conditions of high temperature, pressure and humidity that are required for many precision applications (e.g., military applications). On the other hand, optical glasses have been and will continue to be the materials of choice for high precision imaging optics. Unfortunately, glass materials are extremely difficult to process using conventional methods. As an alternative to traditional glass lens manufacturing processes, compression molding of glass lenses can be a very attractive approach [1-3].