Commercially available GRADIUM® glasses present lens designers with new freedoms to increase performance or reduce the lens count, weight, and cost of optical systems. These glasses possess an axial gradient through the entire glass thickness with large changes in refractive index (?n), dispersion (?v), or other properties. GRADIUM glass lenses containing large refractive index gradients are especially powerful for reducing aberrations in both monochromatic and chromatic lens systems. The purpose of this paper is to explain the general properties of GRADIUM glasses, how these glasses and lenses are manufactured, and the specifications and tolerances of the glasses and lenses. Using GRADIUM glass lenses is very straightforward; the lenses are fabricated with spherical surfaces and used like homogenous (single index) lenses. Comparisons between the theoretical design and actual lens performance for several commercial lenses are presented.

Date Published: 25 September 1997
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 3130, Lens Design, Illumination, and Optomechanical Modeling, (25 September 1997); doi: 10.1117/12.284047

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3130:
Lens Design, Illumination, and Optomechanical Modeling
R. Barry Johnson; Robert E. Fischer; R. Barry Johnson; Richard C. Juergens; Richard C. Juergens; Paul R. Yoder Jr.; Warren J. Smith; Paul R. Yoder Jr., Editor(s)