The difference between sapphire windows, sapphire optical windows and sapphire protective windows

A window is a parallel plane plate usually used as a protective window for electronic sensors or detectors of the external environment.

The windows do not change the magnification of the system.

Substrate materials include various sapphire, optical glass, K9, UV fused silica, IR fused silica and calcium fluoride (CaF2), magnesium fluoride (MgF2), zinc selenide (ZnSe), germanium (Ge), silicon (Si) and other crystal materials, and provide various optical coatings such as anti-reflection film, high-reflection film, beam splitting film, and metal film.

Broadband AR coatings are available in the UV, visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths.

A window made of a single crystal sapphire material is called a sapphire window.

Sapphire window is a generic name, which itself includes sapphire optical window, sapphire protective window.

Sapphire optical windows refer to sapphire window products used in optical applications.

Such optical uses generally refer to imaging, detection, scanning, and the like. Because sapphire has the ability to transmit the full spectrum from ultraviolet to near infrared, sapphire optical windows can reduce the amount of glass used in optical instruments, greatly reduce the weight of equipment, and have a wide range of applications in aerospace and other fields.

However, the transmittance of sapphire material is only between 82-85%. In order to improve the transmittance of a specific wavelength band or prevent the transmission of a specific wavelength band, it is often necessary to carry out a specially designed coating treatment on the sapphire optical window, such as AR coating, AF film, etc., in the application of high-intensity laser, the requirements for the coating are higher, and the application of high-threshold coating technology to sapphire is a direction currently being studied in my country.

In order to make sapphire optical windows meet higher requirements, higher requirements are also put forward for the processing of sapphire optical windows.

First of all, in order to ensure the consistency of spectral transmission, it is necessary to ensure the parallelism of the sapphire window (that is, the consistency of both sides to solve the optical path problem);

There are also strict requirements for the flatness (surface type) of any plane. The flatness is required to be within the nanometer range, which is called the wavelength optically, and is generally required to be within 1/4 wavelength.

The sapphire protective window is a window product used to protect the user or the contents of the container by utilizing the characteristics of sapphire pressure resistance, scratch resistance and high temperature resistance.

Due to the extremely high hardness of sapphire, it has stronger compression resistance and scratch resistance than other glass products. The protective windows processed with sapphire are often used in deep water, oil fields, flammable and explosive occasions, high-pressure containers, Vacuum containers and other fields, at the same time, sapphire can withstand high temperature of 2030 degrees Celsius, and is also often used in high temperature containers.

As can be seen from the above, sapphire window is a common name, and sapphire optical window and sapphire protective window are exclusive names for different applications of sapphire.

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