Precision Optics Capabilities & Solutions

Newport offers advanced optics component technologies to OEM customers in markets ranging from semiconductor equipment and biomedical instruments to industrial, aerospace and defense applications. We combine cutting-edge manufacturing technologies including diamond-turning machines, CNC generators and polishers, ruling engines and holographic recording chambers, advanced replication processes, automated coating chambers, MRF technology with a wide range of advanced metrology equipment. We continuously develop advanced optics technical capabilities and processes for fabrication, coating, and verifying high precision optical components:

High precision surfaces polished to tight irregularity, surface roughness, and cosmetic specifications are verified using state-of-the-art metrology equipment. Thin film coatings over a broad spectral range, Deep Ultraviolet to Visible to Infrared, employing multiple deposition methods for broadband, narrowband, and multi-band anti-reflective, reflective, filter, and polarization are verified with sophisticated coating metrology tools. Diffraction gratings are characterized for efficiency, wavefront, ghost and stray light performance. 

Utilizing advanced CNC and deterministic manufacturing equipment and process enables us to meet the ever-increasing demands for precision optics in the semiconductor capital equipment, bioinstrumentation, industrial, aerospace, defense, and security markets. Continued investment in capabilities and capacity has nurtured our long-term, ever-expanding relationships with our OEM customers. Our experienced team of manufacturing engineers and master opticians has developed methods for minimizing mid-spatial frequency (MSF) errors, fabricating free-form and conformal surfaces, producing low surface roughness and low sub-surface damage optics, and fabrication of components with complex, tight-tolerance mechanical geometries.

• CNC/Deterministic Process
• Aspheres
• Diamond-turning
• Free-form/Conformal
• Spheres/Hemispheres/Plano
• Complex Shapes & Geometry

Advanced system requirements often prohibit the use of adhesives for bonding optical components. We have developed expertise in non-adhesive bonding and optical contacting. Beamsplitters, waveplates, doublet lenses, and prism assemblies can be optically contacted to demanding tolerances.

In order to ensure the highest performing grating our engineering and manufacturing teams at Newport may make several master gratings to allow the selection of the best master to replicate to produce high-fidelity copies of the groove pattern (to match imaging properties) and groove profile (to match efficiency and scattered light). Gratings replicated from the same master are drop-in replacements for each other – the replica gratings are interchangeable. Replicated gratings can be made to be environmental stable, handling high heat and high humidity, and have been used successfully in extreme environments (such as satellites in deep space).

Newport’s replicated mirror specialty lies in fabrication of metal, ceramic, or composite optics that can incorporate integral mounts, adjustments, and other features. By eliminating separate mounting structures and working with materials other than glass, optical systems can be made lighter, more thermally stable, and more rigid, while facilitating assembly and increasing repeatability. Our unique manufacturing processes allow substrate designs that would not otherwise be feasible, and mirror surfaces can be placed in locations that would otherwise be impossible.

Replicated optics can be used for both reflective and transmissive components. The main reasons for using replicated optics include:

• Ensure part to part consistency
• Minimize system cost
• Produce light weight or low inertia optics
• Locate optical surfaces in otherwise inaccessible locations

Ensuring the spectral efficiency, wavelength dispersion and limited stray artifacts of custom mastered diffraction gratings is critical to the performance of your instruments.

• Efficiency Characterization of UV, VIS & NIR in S- and P-Plane
• Diffracted Wavefront Characterization
• Ghost & Stray Light Characterization

Our ability to measure what we make is vital to meeting the requirements for advance optical components for our OEM customers. Interferometry of many types deployed on the optics shop floor ae key tools in verifying optical surfaces.

• QED ASI - Aspheric Stitching Interferometer
• Fizeau Interferometers
• White-light Interferometer
• Bright/Dark Field Microscope
• Zeiss Eclipse CMM

Our talented and experienced thin film designers and process engineers, working closely with coating technicians, select from multiple deposition techniques to optimize coating performance parameters. Coating technologies available include thermal evaporation, electron-beam, ion-assisted deposition, and advanced plasma deposition. We have developed a market-leading strength in deep ultraviolet (DUV) thin film coatings supporting the semi-conductor market. Newport’s optical filters deliver a high level of precision, productivity and consistency of spectral performance. To better serve our customers, we have custom designed and built a proprietary spectrophotometer which enables optical filters to be verifiable to optical density 8 (OD8) blocking & measure the most demanding spectral transitions. Beginning with surface fabrication to minimize surface roughness and sub-surface damage, continuing with surface cleaning and preparation, followed by deposition of high-performance thin film designs, and completed with comprehensive performance testing, our coating capabilities are unmatched by any of our peers.

• Anti-reflective, Reflective, Filter, and Polarization
• Optical Filters – Bandpass, Dichroic, Edge, Notch
  • ODiate™ & Stabilife^® coating platforms
• DUV Specialists
• Broadband DUV Coatings
• Photo-Contamination Control
• High-Damage-Threshold, Long-Lifetime Coatings
• DUV-UV-VIS-NIR-IR Spectrophotometers
• Broadband, Goniometric Spectrophotomer
• Spectrophotometer verifiable to optical density 8 (OD8) blocking
• DUV-UV-VIS-NIR-IR Ellipsometry

Custom Optics Fabrication Capabilities Matrix (30 kB, PDF)