With the continuous progress of modern science and technology, glass has also been applied in different industries. According to different properties of glass, it is often used in different industries such as indoor and outdoor decoration, lighting, personal privacy, and safety, making our lives both safe and convenient. What kind of glass is the lens used for? What are its main uses? Let’s learn about the glass used in lenses and its uses.
A lens is made according to the law of refraction of light, so it is also called a refractive lens. It is an optical element made of transparent material that can form different images through the refraction principle of a lens, including real and virtual images. A lens is formed by refraction of two spherical surfaces, and generally consists of a convex lens with a thick middle and thin edge, a biconvex lens, a planar convex lens, and a concave convex lens; There are different types of concave lenses with thin centers and thick edges, flat concave lenses, biconcave lenses, convex concave lenses, and so on.
The formation of lenses mainly involves processes such as milling, fine grinding, polishing, edging, cleaning, inspection, and coating to form the optical elements we want – lenses. Glass lenses that have not been processed are referred to as lens blanks.
In the optical industry, optical glass can be divided into three categories: radiation resistant optical glass, colored optical glass, and colorless optical glass.
1、 Colorless optical glass is almost transparent in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths, and is a type of optical glass that is currently widely used. It can be classified into many grades based on the refractive index and dispersion of the glass. Crown glass, mainly borosilicate glass (represented by K), will become flint glass after adding aluminum oxide. Therefore, another commonly used optical glass is flint optical glass (represented by F), “They mainly differ in refractive index and dispersion index. Firestone glass has a relatively large refractive index and dispersion, making it the main material for manufacturing spectral components.”.
2、 Radiation resistant optical glass has various properties of colorless optical glass, and its performance is relatively stable. This glass adds a small amount of cerium dioxide to the colorless glass to eliminate the color center in the radiation glass, making the absorption of the glass smaller after being irradiated.
3、 Colored glass is colored optical glass that has specific absorption and transmission properties for certain wavelengths of light, also known as filter glass. Color glass and filters are similar to interference filters in that they selectively absorb and reflect certain colors, changing their color to reduce beam intensity.
