Optics

Voxtel using Pixelligent coatings to improve freeform-gradient-optics performance

March 13, 2018

Voxtel has integrated PixClear materials from Pixelligent Technologies into into VIRGO GRIN lenses.

Voxtel (Beaverton, OR) has integrated PixClear materials from Pixelligent Technologies (Baltimore, MD) into its VIRGO graded-refractive-index (GRIN) lens products. Voxtel's subsidiary VadientOptics will incorporate Pixelligent's capped zirconia nanocrystal into its VIRGO graded-index lens products, delivering both dramatically higher focusing power and reduced weight when compared to conventional lens assemblies.

The companies says that optics have become a $36 billion worldwide market with new applications increasing the performance demands for new optical designs and products every year. Vadient Optics expects these Virgo 3D GRIN optical lenses to find success in military and sport optics, medical imaging, computational imaging, custom optics, smart phone optics, and solid-state lighting segments.

"Our proprietary additive manufacturing platform produces freeform gradient optics for making both leading-edge light-field-lens arrays, as well as more traditional compact and lightweight eyepieces and objective-lens systems. This platform requires highly defined and consistent optical properties to deliver high yields, predictable and consistent quality, and a vast array of custom products. Pixelligent's Zirconia nanocomposites provide a significantly higher refractive index versus regular acrylate resins and enables Vadient Optics the dispersion compensation required to correct color aberration over the visual spectrum, a Voxtel patented technology. Pixelligent has been an excellent partner, consistently delivering the highest quality zirconia nanodispersions that meet all of our stringent high-refractive index and high transparency requirements," said Paul Harmon, VP of Vadient Optics.

"This is another great example of Pixelligent's patented PixClear [trademark] Zirconia dispersions enabling an innovative product from our customers. We worked closely with Voxtel over a number of years and were able to deliver a ZrO₂ nanocomposite that is compatible with VadientOptic's specific formulation requirements and help them deliver to the next generation of high refractive-graded-index 3D lenses to their customers. Voxtel is also the first customer to integrate our PixClear [trademark] materials into an additive manufacturing application, a rapidly emerging field where we are experiencing great interest," said Shree Deshpande, VP of business development at Pixelligent.

Voxtel will be releasing the new graded-index products in 2018.

SOURCE: Pixelligent; www.pixelligent.com

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.