UV Lenses

Our custom range of UV lenses can be manufactured from a range of UV materials such as calcium fluoride which works at extreme ultraviolet and vacuum ultraviolet down to 130nm; UV grade fused silica performs well in far ultraviolet to 175nm, achieving 85% transmission at 185nm. Quartz can be used for UV A, B and C applications as quartz starts to transmit efficiently at 260nm.

Knight Optical offers a wide range of high quality custom UV lenses for a variety of applications.

Custom UV grade ball & half ball lenses: Custom UV grade ball and custom UV grade half ball lenses are most commonly used to couple light in and out of fibres.  Knight Optical supplies a range of custom ball lenses and custom half ball lenses to your bespoke specifications.  Custom UV ball lenses can be manufactured as various grades from grade 3 to mid-range grade 25 to commercial quality grade 200.

Custom UV grade biconvex lenses: Custom UV grade biconvex lenses are a simple lens comprising two convex spherical surfaces, generally with the same radius of curvature. Knight Optical can supply a range of custom UV grade biconvex lenses in UV grade materials such as calcium fluoride and fused silica.  Custom AR coatings are available to increase performance in deep UV applications.

Custom UV grade planoconcave and biconcave lenses: custom UV grade planoconcave lenses have one spherical face and one flat plano face whereas custom UV grade biconcave lenses have two concave faces. Because the spherical face is concave the lens has a negative focal length, allowing them to increase the divergence of convergent light.  Custom UV grade concave lenses can be used to balance out the spherical aberrations caused by other lenses in a range of ultraviolet instrument applications.  This makes concave lenses very useful for controlling laser beams.  Our range of custom UV concave lenses is generally manufactured from UV grade fused silica for deep UV applications down to 175nm achieving 85% transmission at 185nm.

Custom UV grade cylindrical lenses:   Custom UV grade cylindrical lenses are designed to focus light into a straight line, rather than to a single point.  Cylindrical lenses have a cylindrical surface shape rather than the usual spherical which allows for one dimensional shaping of light along a line.  Custom UV grade cylindrical lenses are typically either plano-concave or plano-convex, designed to expand and focus light respectively.  UV cylindrical lenses are often used to change the profile of laser beams, for example to correct for astigmatism and ellipticity in diode lasers or to generate lines form single mode lasers. We offer a range of custom UV grade cylindrical lenses manufactured from UV grade fused silica achieving 85% transmission at 185nm but still working efficiently at 175nm in deep UV applications.  Cylindrical lenses can be manufactured to over 250nmm long, for extreme lengths they can be lined up next to each other within a frame.

Custom UV grade achromatic doublet lenses:  A single lens used to form an image will always show some chromatic aberration that is variation of focal length with wavelength.  Achromatic doublet lenses correct for this as they are constructed from two different glass types and designed to remove first order chromatic aberration. Generally spherical aberration is reduced at the same time.  Achromatic doublets are probably the most economical way of achieving quality white light illumination and imaging.

Custom UV grade meniscus lenses:  Custom UV grade meniscus lenses have one concave and one convex surface.  In this lens type the two curvatures are chosen to minimise the spherical aberration at one laser wavelength, hence they can be useful to control a laser beam of the appropriate wavelength.  Our high quality custom UV grade meniscus lenses are utilised at 175nm as UV grade fused silica works efficiently in the deep UV.

Custom UV grade planoconvex lenses:  Custom UV grade planoconvex lenses have one plane and one convex surface and have a positive focal length.  Custom UV grade planoconvex lenses are typically used for focusing or collecting light in UV optical systems.  Knight Optical supply a range of custom UV grade plano-convex lenses generally available from 3mm diameter up to 450mm diameter with a full range of focal lengths.  Custom UV grade planoconvex lenses are manufactured from UV grade fused silica, an excellent choice of material for deep ultra-violet spectral range applications.  UV Grade Fused Silica has exceptional chemical purity, excellent thermal properties with low fluorescence making an ideal choice for medical fluorescence applications.  Our custom range of planoconvex UV Grade Fused Silica lenses can be supplied uncoated or with high efficiency UV antireflective coated on both faces with multilayer AR for 248-400nm use.

Knight Optical supply high quality custom UV grade lenses made to our exact specification.  All lenses are QA tested by our highly skilled technicians in our state of art metrology lab to ensure all components meet our high quality standards.  For example our Optispheric with wave sensor reflex tests for focal length and centration, our Zygo Verifire is used to test lens form error.

Contact our multilingual technical sales team and discover how Knight Optical’s high quality custom UV grade lenses can improve your product and supply chain experience.