Introduction | Substrate Materials | Substrate Specifications

Choosing the Right Material
The primary criterion for selecting the substrate material is the wavelengths it will see.

Because of its better thermal properties, fused silica is usually preferred over BK-7 as a substrate in high power applications. However, BK-7 is just as suitable in many cases and its lower cost may be a deciding factor when buying a large number of components. In addition to fused silica we keep BK-7 in stock and will gladly supply coated or uncoated BK-7 optics if these are appropriate.

TecOptics also has vast experience in fabricating substrates from many other materials such as Zerodur^Æ and IR fused silica. We are happy to supply these specialized requirements.

Material Quality
TecOptics employs only the very highest grade materials in the fabrication of substrates. Our long experience in the production of ultra-precise components and high energy laser optics clearly established that any compromise in material quality is a false economy that can result in serious degradation or even failure of an optical system.

All our optical materials have very low, or even zero, bubbles and inclusions with excellent refractive index homogeneity.