Newport Thin Film Laboratory

Home Up Feedback Contents Search Employment Schedule News

Home
BG Series
GG Series
KG Series
OG Series
RG Series
VG Series
WG Series

 

Home Up BG Series GG Series KG Series OG Series RG Series VG Series WG Series

 

wpe11.gif (2465 bytes)®       wpe7.gif (205732 bytes)

 

Newport Thin Film Laboratory offers a full range of Schott® optical filter glass in various shapes, sizes and thickness.  Please contact us with your specific requirements.

Schott® filter glass operates by selectively absorbing various frequencies and transmitting others.   Their advantage over dielectric/dichroic filters is that they block energy over much larger wavelength regions.  Their disadvantage is that since they absorb the energy blocked, they are subject to thermal fracture.  Often times, the optimal filter will utilize a dielectric multilayer coating applied to a Schott® filter glass.

When light passes through an absorbing filter glass, the amount absorbed in any unit volume is proportional to the intensity of the incident light times the absorption coefficient, which is wavelength dependent.  As a result, the intensity of an incident beam drops exponentially as it passes through the filter.  This can be expressed by Lambert's law:

                                    ti = e-acx

where ti is the internal transmittance of the filter, a is the absorption coefficient, c is the absorber concentration, and x is the filter thickness.  Note that a is wavelength dependent, so the filter transmittance is wavelength dependent.

As a general rule, absorbing filter glass is heated unevenly during irradiation.  Due to its low thermal conductivity, absorbing filter glass reaches thermal equilibrium slowly.  The resulting temperature differences between the front and back side of a filter and the edge and center of a filter produce flexural stresses within the filter glass that can result in filter breakage.

For many applications, a combination of thermal tempering of the filter glass and application of a dielectric coating will greatly improve resistance to rapid temperature changes.

 

Back Home Up

Newport Thin Film Laboratory  ¨  (800) 854-0089  ¨  www.newportlab.com

 

Send mail to pspowers@newportlab.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 08/16/09