Trade fair highlight 13. April 2026

Laser-based fabrication of complex glass optics

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Laser polishing of a Ø30 mm fused silica lens using a CO2-laser with resulting Ra < 1 nm.

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DSMLA with 20 x 20 lenses, a pitch of 500 µm, and a center thickness of 40 µm (SLE form generation).

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Aspherical Gullwing lens with (Ø40 mm) after laser-based shaping using the SLE lathe machine.

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SLE lathe for manufacturing large optics at high rotational speeds.

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Fiber-chip coupler featuring integrated isolator, beam splitter, optics, and fibers.

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Selective laser-induced etching (SLE) is a two-stage fabrication process that enables the production of monolithic 3D components from transparent materials, offering exceptional geometric flexibility and high precision. For optical elements the back, edge, and front surfaces are processed in a single clamping step, ensuring the highest precision of the optical axes relative to each other.
An alternative shape generating approach is laser ablation, in which the inverse of the target geometry is removed layer by layer. Depending on the glass type, the removal rate can exceed 0.5 mm³/(W min).
After form generation, the rough surface is laser polished. Here, a thin surface layer is melted resulting in a smoothing of the surface by material redistribution rather than material removal. The process can reliably achieve a surface roughness Sa < 1 nm with a process rate of > 5 cm² / s.
Should the resulting optical surface not suffice the requirements for MSFE and LSFE, a further process step is undertaken: Laser Beam Figuring. By utilizing a focused CO2-laser, a localized nm-scale ablation can be achieved. With a lateral resolution of ~50 µm MSFE down to a spatial wavelength of 100 µm can be removed.