Optical Glass: A High-Tech Base Material as Key Enabler for Photonics

Optical glass is the base material for the fabrication of spherical lenses, aspheres, prisms, beam splitters, optical fibers, axicons, or other optical components. The photonic indus try relies on such components and so on optical glass. Photonics is a key enabling tech - nology for many market segments and applications. The requirements for optical glass are the highest transmission and tight tolerances of not only the optical properties such as refraction and dispersion but also the mechanical properties such as sufficient size and low stress content. In order to achieve the above mentioned specification, a sophis - ticated melting technology, hot forming processes, annealing procedure, and measure ment devices are required. This chapter discusses the most relevant information of these processes.