Experimental study of the fabrication of chalcogenide glass lenses by using precision glass molding

Although the development of small formats (640 × 480 pixel arrays) and amorphous silicon microbolometers has greatly decreased detector cost, another important component of a thermal camera, the optics, still prohibit a breakthrough for high-volume commercial systems. The aspheric lenses used in thermal imaging are typically made using the costly single-point diamond turning (SPDT) process with expensive single-crystal materials (Ge, ZnS, etc.). As a potential solution to reduce cost, the compression molding method using chalcogenide glass has become attractive for fabricating IR optics. The present paper reports the fabrication of a mold and a molded chalcogenide glass lens for a thermal security camera. In addition, the molded chalcogenide glass lens was evaluated using the form error, roughness and decentration for each surface of the molded lens. From the evaluation results, we verified that the molded lens was capable of being used for thermal imaging applications.