If you have heard of LIDAR, night vision, thermal camera or spectroscopy, you may understand that infrared applications surround us and are poised to a steady development in the near future. As most of the Photonics applications, infrared applications need optical elements.

The short answer is optical components that are used in infrared wavelength. They are particular because infrared wavelength are by definition not visible with human eyes. Therefore specific equipment are required to asses them.

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Infrared optics are reputed for not being cheap, which limit their application especially for high quantities and complexe shapes (aspherical). Fortunately, chalcogenide glass is a good alternative to more commun materials like germaniun for far infrared applications. Chalcogenide glass, mainly made of S, Se, As, Ge and Te have low softening temperature which enable this material to be molded. While chalcogenide glass itself may be more expensive than Germanium, by molding it, it  can be used to get high quantities, affordable aspherical optics.

One other interesting characteristic of chalcogenide glass is it’s low temperature dependency of it’s refractive index (dn/dT), which means that the material optical properties will be more stable with change of temperature.

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Moreover, as infrared range is quite wide, IR optics can be divided in different groups according to their applications.

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As we have seen above, IR optical components relates to many different kind of components and materials. Most of the precision optics suppliers do provide optical components for infrared application whereas some supplier specialized in IR material manufacturing (Ge, Si, ZnSe, CaF2, MgF2 etc..)

Thermal IR are wavelength used for thermal imaging application, their range may varies according to the applications but commonly covers MWIR & LWIR.

Infrared refers to electromagnetic radiations with wavelength spectrum between 750nm and 1mm. The name cames from the infrared spectrum covers radiations of smaller frequencies than the smallest visible wavelengths view as red by the human eye.

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As the range of IR radiation is quite large, further division of the spectrum is done, each corresponding to certain characteristics. Below shows the detail of each IR subdivision.

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SWIR stands for Short-Wavelength Infrared, it’s spectrum covers 1µm to 3µm. The SWIR wavelength are used for long distance communications.

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NIR stands for Near Infrared, by near it refers to it’s closeness to visible spectrum. The NIR spectrum covers 750nm to 1µm.  These wavelengths are used in the night vision technology and telecommunications.

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There are different grades of chalcogenide glass available on the market with optical index ranging from 2.49 to 3.13 (lower than Germanium ones) and densities from 4.4 g/cm3 to 5.3 g/cm3. Dimensions of molded chalcogenide glass lenses can range from 5mm to 25mm diameter.