MKS announces Newport replicated freeform mirrors

Introduced at SPIE's Photonics West 2024, Newport Replicated Freeform Mirrors remove the optical design constraint of rotational symmetry, enabling optical designers to further increase the efficiency and precision of many types of optical systems, offering improved aberration correction, higher image quality, increased optical throughput, and the promise of reduced footprint. The new Newport replicated freeform mirrors can be used in many different applications, such as analytical instruments, imaging systems, laser tracking and communications.

Newport Replicated Freeform Mirrors utilise optical replication technology, which centres around the use of a precision master to create nearly identical copies. High-quality optical replication is an ideal manufacturing process for freeform mirrors as all the engineering and metrology are focused on the master. Once a high-quality master has been designed, fabricated, and qualified, the optical replication manufacturing process creates nearly exact copies of the highly engineered freeform master. Newport replicated freeform mirrors have a spectral range of 200 nm to 15 µm and the reflective surfaces can be bare aluminium, bare gold, or protected aluminium, enabling a wide application space. The mirrors are enhanced by advanced proprietary metrology tools and techniques to validate the freeform mirror surface figure and ensure part-to-part accuracy.  

"Replicated freeform mirrors enable optical designers another important degree of freedom for advanced optical system design, delivering optics without boundaries," said Marc Tricard, Vice President of Optical Systems Business, MKS Instruments. "Newport Freeform Mirrors have been used internally to enable several successful systems designs. MKS' business model for freeform mirrors is built around decades of providing custom optical components to meet the needs of our customers. Newport Replicated Freeform Mirrors are an excellent addition to our world-class optics initiative."

MKS works with our customers at the application and system level to custom design a freeform mirror that meets or exceeds the system requirements. The company can supply a replicated freeform mirror at the component level or utilise the freeform mirror technology to deliver as part of an integrated optical sub-assembly.