Rugged oxide ceramics for optics

At the Naval Research Laboratory, we have developed several rugged oxide materials for optics applications. These materials include cubic sesquioxides (Y2O3 and Lu2O3) and spinel ceramics which transmit in the UV, visible, SWIR and MWIR wavelength region. These materials have superior mechanical and optical properties compared to the currently used materials on various Navy / DoD systems. The transparent and rugged ceramics are fabricated by the Hot press/HIP method using ultra-pure powder synthesized in-house and the resulting ceramics typically have excellent optical quality with no birefringence. In this paper, we present the optical properties of these rugged transparent ceramics and lens designs using these materials will be also discussed.