Superpolishing

Superpolished materials include N-BK7, calcium fluoride, crystal quarz, fused silica, sapphire, silicon carbide, YAG, Nd:YAG, and ZERODUR.

Calcium fluoride

Calcium fluoride is particularly valued for its high laser damage threshold and minimal absorption, making it an essential material for ultraviolet, visible, and infrared optical systems. It is widely used in lithography, metrology, and excimer laser applications, where ultra-low scatter and high durability are required.

Sapphire Polishing

Sapphire is a unique material well suited for many ultraprecision optical applications. It is transparent from the lower UV (142 nm) through the mid-infrared (6.5 µm). Its high tensile strength makes it well suited to many high g-force environments.

In addition, sapphire is very tolerant of high radiation environments, such as space-based applications. Due to its high mechanical strength, sapphire is a very difficult material to polish. Our unique superpolishing processes allow us to polish sapphire components to better than 1 Å surface roughness.

Silicon Carbide Polishing

Silicon carbide (SiC) is often used in the optics industry to replace components previously manufactured out of beryllium. The material offers a viable alternative with low weight, high specific stiffness, high thermal conductivity, and excellent dimensional stability. We have developed expertise in polishing silicon carbide mirrors and can polish CVD SILICON CARBIDE™ and lightweight versions of this material.

We also offer customer-supplied substrate polishing services. Additionally, we offer SiC cladding with IBS coatings to ensure the finest possible final surface finish. Lastly, we also supply optical coatings on the finished mirror.

G&H’s superpolished optics play a fundamental role in numerous advanced optical applications, offering minimal scatter, high reflectivity, and unmatched durability. This commitment to excellence has positioned G&H as a trusted provider of superpolished optics for some of the most demanding applications in the world. From NASA’s Mars Curiosity mission to cutting-edge synchrotron experiments, enabling ground breaking discoveries and technological advancements.

Ring Laser Gyroscopes (RLGs) - One of the most prominent applications of superpolished optics is in ring laser gyroscopes (RLGs), which are essential for inertial navigation systems in aircraft, spacecraft, and military applications

Synchrotron and X-ray Mirrors - In the field of synchrotron and X-ray optics, superpolished mirrors are indispensable for research facilities requiring extreme precision and ultra-low roughness surfaces. Our custom optics have enabled scientists to achieve prize-winning results in LIGO, NASA's Mars Curiosity Sky Crane, and in synchrotron facilities around the world.

Telecom Optics: Ultra-Thin Wafer Manufacturing - G&H plays a crucial role in the telecommunications industry, where low loss optics are vital for efficient fiber-optic communication systems. Superpolished wafers, featuring total thickness variation (TTV) of less than 12nm, are used in tunable lasers and high-precision beam splitters.

Research-Grade Mirror Substrates - For research-grade mirror substrates, G&H delivers optics that set the industry standard for precision. Flat and concave superpolished mirrors, designed for high-precision interferometry and quantum optics experiments, undergo rigorous surface verification using advanced metrology tools such as Zygo NexView NX2 and cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS).