Design, Fabrication and Evaluation of Nonconventional Optical Components

Download or read book Design, Fabrication and Evaluation of Nonconventional Optical Components written by Hui Li and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main focus of this dissertation is to seek scientific and fundamental knowledge of nonconventional optical components including its optical design, ultraprecision prototyping, precision molds making, transition into industrial production and efficient evaluation. A nonconventional component in this dissertation is loosely defined as an optical component either that is not symmetric around its optical axis or that is aspherical surface with three or higher order coefficient. Nonconventional optics have broadened the vision of optical designers and enhanced the design flexibility and thus are becoming increasingly important as a core next-generation optical component. These optical components have gradually been implemented to replace conventional spherical and aspherical counterparts in the fields of imaging (Plummer, 1982), illumination (Fournier & Rolland, 2008), aviation (Spano, 2008) , and energy (Zamora, et al., 2009) where freeform optics have demonstrated excellent optical performance and high degree of system integration. However, design, fabrication and metrology of nonconventional optics have not been developed at the same pace. Due to the complex nature of nonconventional optics manufacturing processes, the production efficiency and finished quality of nonconventional optical components are difficult to be improved. To validate optical performance, in this dissertation ultraprecision diamond tooling is applied to prototype the optical design, which is capable of generating precision optical features both on polymer blank and metal mold without post grinding and polishing process. In addition, the prototyping process also paves the way to mold fabrication. To produce low cost high volume high quality nonconventional optical components, precision compression/microinjection molding has been combined with ultraprecision diamond machining and cleanroom manufacturing respectively for different size scale and application. Once the low cost molded nonconventional optical components and assembly are fabricated, their optical performance needs to be characterized to ensure quality in industrial production. The geometric feature and principle optical parameter, such as focal length, are two important aspects that influence the final optical performance considerably. In order to solve the major problems in manufacturing affordable high quality nonconventional optical components, this dissertation will include several key steps: 1) Investigate nonconventional optics design that could be functionally and economically applied in various optical components or systems to further improve their performance; 2) Validate and evaluate nonconventional optics design by ultraprecision prototyping; 3) Develop the precision molds manufacturing process and the corresponding molding process both for miniaturized lens profile and micro scale diffraction structure; 4) Investigate the products quality by crucial optical parameters measurement and surface profiling. Overall, this dissertation describes a comprehensive understanding of low cost high volume nonconventional optics manufacturing.