Development of a low cost high precision fabrication process for glass hybrid aspherical diffractive lenses

The hybrid aspherical diffractive singlet achromat design can be used to reduce chromatic aberration in compact optical systems. In this paper, the development of a compression molded, low cost and high precision hybrid diffractive glass lens is described. Specifically, an aspherical diffractive lens designed to compensate for chromatic aberration was fabricated by precision glass molding. The diffractive features are integrated on the aspherical surface to avoid mold alignment during fabrication. As part of the effort to lower manufacturing cost, the diffractive profiles were directly fabricated by single-point diamond turning without polishing. A thin layer of platinum-iridium coating was applied to the mold surfaces to protect the mold inserts from degradation during the molding process. In order to reduce thermal shrinkage error, the hybrid lens was fabricated using a two-step precision molding process on a commercial glass molding machine. The geometry of the molde d hybrid aspherical diffractive lens was measured using an optical profilometer and the results demonstrated a match to the design mold profile with a replication error of 0.16% in the radial direction and 6.3% in the axial direction. In addition, an optical metrology system to evaluate the diffraction efficiency and chromatic focal shift was constructed and the measured results showed that the hybrid lenses indeed function as designed.