Polymer Optics and Molded Glass Optics: Design, Fabrication, and Materials IV

This conference will address three areas: polymer optics (all areas) molded glass optics design and manufacturing discriminators between plastic and glass optical systems. Papers involving any of these areas will be considered for presentation. Polymer optics can be found in many aspects of our daily lives. Modern applications are vast and include camera phones, near-to-eye displays, microprojection, panoramic capture systems, biometrics, endoscopy, automotive, and many others. Polymer optics have become increasingly prevalent due to continuously improving manufacturing tolerances, their ability to incorporate mechanical features directly into the optical parts, their ability to scale to high volumes, their low cost relative to that of other technologies and their low mass relative to glass. Molded glass optics has advanced greatly in the last decade, both to improve quality and to adopt the low-cost manufacturability that had previously been conceded to injection molded polymer optics. This conference will be dedicated to both polymer optics and molded glass optics, including plastic/glass hybrid optics, with special emphasis on recent developments in the field.