Sapphire plano-convex lenses are suitable for high power, high-pressure applications, and vacuum or corrosive atmospheres. Sapphire is a single crystal form of alumina, Al2O3. The material is extremely hard and resistant to attack by strong acids. It has high compressive strength, a high melting point, and excellent thermal conductivity. Transmission range is from 150 to 5,000 nm.
Our SAPX010 and SAPX013 Sapphire lenses are suitable for high power, high-pressure applications, and vacuum or corrosive atmospheres. Sapphire is a single crystal form of alumina, Al2O3. The material is extremely hard and resistant to attack by strong acids. It has high compressive strength, a high melting point, and excellent thermal conductivity. Transmission range is from 150 nm to 5 µm.
Standard effective focal lengths across a variety of newport lens sizes, materials and shapes provide a systematic approach allowing for lenses of different sizes to be interchanged without requiring other changes to your optical system. Collimating a point light source coming from the planar surface or focusing a collimated light source which is incident on the curved surface will help to minimize the spherical aberration.
Plano-Convex lenses are the best choice for focusing parallel rays of light to a single point. They can be used to focus, collect and collimate light. The asymmetry of this lens shape minimizes spherical aberration in situations where the object and image are located at unequal distance from the lens. The optimum case is where the object is placed at infinity with parallel rays entering lens and the final image is a focused point.
For an application example, let’s look at the case of the output from a Newport R-31005 HeNe laser focused to a spot using a KPX043 Plano-Convex Lens. This Hene laser has a beam diameter of 0.63 mm and a divergence of 1.3 mrad. Note that these are beam diameter and full divergence, so in the notation of our figure, y1 = 0.315 mm and θ1 = 0.65 mrad. The KPX043 lens has a focal length of 25.4 mm. Thus, at the focused spot, we have a radius θ1f = 16.5 µm. So, the diameter of the spot will be 33 µm.
Since a common application is the collimation of the output from an Optical Fiber, let’s use that for our numerical example. The Newport F-MBB fiber has a core diameter of 200 µm and a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.37. The radius y1 of our source is then 100 µm. NA is defined in terms of the half-angle accepted by the fiber, so θ1 = 0.37. If we again use the KPX043 , 25.4 mm focal length lens to collimate the output, we will have a beam with a radius of 9.4 mm and a half-angle divergence of 4 mrad.
The lenses can be mounted in LT series lens tube for constructing a complex optical system or quickly connecting to other threaded lens mounts: A-Line™ series fixed lens mount, or adjustable lens positioner (with thread adapter). Use LT-WR series spanner wrench for easy lens installation.
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