New paper is coming!

My new paper is coming soon!

It will be featured in the Photonics Spectra, April 2011 issue.

Here is the sample of abstract.

Hybrid Glass-Polymer Optics for IR Applications*

BY VALENTINA DOUSHKINA, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, EXTENSION AND DOUSHKINA OPTICS

Development of infrared detector technology has brought to market high-performance infrared cameras for demanding thermal imaging applications in the shortwave, mid-wave and long-wave spectral bands. There is a vast demand on high-performance imaging optics for infrared cameras in a variety of markets and applications.

Low manufacturing cost, thermal stability and impact resistance are some unbeatable characteristics of infrared-application hybrid glass-polymer optics. Hybrids offer the thermal stability of glass with the low manufacturing cost of polymers, reducing components cost, weight, complicity of design and alignment, while enhancing the appeal of the products. The narrow range of choices in polymer materials, for IR applications in particular, is counterbalanced by using sophisticated optical surfaces such as aspheric, asphero-diffractive, toroidal, and free-form off-axis optics.

The above advantages are not achievable when polymers or glass optics are used on their own. The integration of polymer and glass for IR applications offers high resolution and diffraction-limited image quality.

In this article, we look at the design and analysis process of combining glass and polymer optics in the IR spectral range. The examples of challenging applications include the diffraction limited fast imaging optics with wide field-of-view and the zoom system.

* Doushkina, V., “Hybrid Glass-Polymer Optics for IR Applications,”  Photonics Spectra April 2011