2023-06-07 05:34:00
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Gennady Detinich
Researchers from Flinders University (Australia) created a new inexpensive polymer that allows the manufacture of lenses and objectives for night vision devices. The discovery might change a lot in the thermal imager industry, and they are needed for both military and civilian applications.
Image Source: Advanced Optical Materials
Today lenses and objectives for IR cameras are milled from materials such as germanium and chalcogenide glasses. This is a lengthy procedure and costly materials. The cost of germanium lenses can reach thousands of US dollars. In addition, chalcogenide glasses usually contain toxic substances such as arsenic or selenium. The polymer proposed by the Australians is synthesized from ordinary sulfur and cyclopentadiene – materials that are obtained during ordinary processing and refining of oil.
According to scientists, the plastic they created has the highest transparency for infrared waves of the long-wavelength region of the materials discovered today. It allows not only to protect the lenses of infrared cameras, camouflaging them and simply covering them from dust, but also capable of refracting infrared rays. In other words, lenses can be made from it by simple stamping or casting and, ultimately, assembled into lenses.
Different lens options made from a new polymer: magnifying, reducing and Fresnel lens
One gram of new plastic costs one cent. The price of lenses from it will be cheap, which will allow the widespread use of IR lenses for civilian purposes from machine vision to surveillance cameras and smartphones, as the authors reported in article In the magazine Advanced Optical Materials.
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