Optical laser windows are transparent plates with optical quality, used for protection against the environment when using a laser. These laser windows are mostly used to isolate optical systems or components against detrimental influences from the environment. These Optical laser windows are used in photodiodes and other kinds of photodetectors and they act to protect the system against dirt, corrosive influences, and mechanical damage. Similarly, housings of lasers are often protected with optical windows. Optical laser windows are applied in various areas as it has a wide scope of application like inactive tubes of gas lasers using helium-neon lasers, optical windows are separating the inside low-pressure gas volume from the outside atmosphere. Similarly, windows are needed as multipass gas cells are used in spectroscopy. These optical windows are made from glasses, fused silica, and BK7 for visible or near-infrared light. For infrared optics at longer wavelengths, one also uses various types of crystalline materials such as calcium fluoride, semiconductors like zinc selenide, silicon, and germanium but this is for low-cost mass applications, some polymer materials are also often used. In the absence of an ideal optical laser window, lenses and mirrors can be used to serve the same purpose. When choosing your optical laser windows, you should avoid glass components like lead and arsenic but should rather go for ecological friendly materials. Make sure that the window has a suitable geometric shape for easy mounting, replacement. Other important factors to be taken into consideration are for it to have a conductive surface, often made of ITO, to be used for electric shielding, high hardness, if resistance against mechanical influences is important in the choice of window, and high optical damage threshold especially in pulsed laser applications. When using laser light you must avoid any form of Optical loss by keeping to some important factors.
Types Of Optical Laser Windows
Infrared Windows
Infrared optical custom laser optic window isolates different physical environments while allowing light to pass through them. When selecting the right choice of windows, you must take into consideration the material, transmission, scattering, wavefront distortion, parallelism, and resistance to a certain environment. The application of the infrared optical laser windows can not be over-emphasized ranging from FLIR, FTIR spectroscopy, medical systems, thermal imaging, or other optics applications within the infrared light spectrum. IR windows can help protect users and equipment from damages.
Ultraviolet Windows
Ultraviolet Windows are designed for optimal performance in the Ultraviolet spectrum and it is widely used in many areas of laser application. The choice for the Ultraviolet Optical laser windows should be based on the substrate’s mechanical and optical properties. When making choice for lenses, it is advisable to choose lens of caf2 cylindrical lens focal length of +1%>
Visible Windows
The third type of optical laser window is the visible optical window. This optical laser window is made and designed for use in the visible light spectrum in an open system just as the name sounds. This spectrum makes use of the type of light that is visible to the human eye. Visible windows are ideal for protecting optical systems and other optical components, imaging or display systems, or other applications.