High precision diameter 0.70mm-50mm optical glass ball lenses

Ball lenses exhibit substantial spherical aberrations when light propagation is not restricted to a small fraction of its cross-section. Examples are shown in Figures 1 and 2.

A special kind of micro-ball lens is obtained by heating the end of a tapered fiber such that it melts.

Applications of Ball Lenses

Ball lenses are great optical components for improving signal coupling between fibers, emitters, and detectors.Ball lenses are used particularly as beam collimators for optical fibers (fiber collimators) and for fiber-to-fiber coupling. They are also suitable for miniature optics with applications like barcode scanning, as objective lenses in endoscopy and for optical sensors. There are also microscope objectives (particularly immersion objectives) which have a hyperhemisphere (e.g., somewhat more than a hemisphere) as the first lens.

Yasi provides ball lenses and half ball lenses made from various substrate materials including sapphire, ruby, BK7, UV fused silica, high index glass, and germanium, ZnSe, ZnS with AR coating. Our ball lenses and half ball lenses are ideal for applications such as fiber communications, endoscopy and microscopy.

Available diameters are between 0.3 mm to 100 mm, with diameter tolerance (sphericity) <0.4 µm and surface roughness (Ra) <0.007 µm. Custom ball and half ball module options are also available on request.