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ZEISS new ALON lens / transparent aluminum (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter GLOBETROTTER
- Start date
I am not an expert on glass types, but high refractive glass types are readily available similar to the claimed transparent aluminum.
However, these are usually soft and used for internal elements.
Also the more exotic types stain as soon as they are made, so they must be multicoated straight away to provide protection, hopefully for many years.
Whether the claimed transparent aluminum will be scratch proof, or stable long term remains to be soon.
Does normal multicoating apply?
From memory 6 inch thick transparent aluminum was used to build a tank to hold a whale, at least in Star Trek?
However, these are usually soft and used for internal elements.
Also the more exotic types stain as soon as they are made, so they must be multicoated straight away to provide protection, hopefully for many years.
Whether the claimed transparent aluminum will be scratch proof, or stable long term remains to be soon.
Does normal multicoating apply?
From memory 6 inch thick transparent aluminum was used to build a tank to hold a whale, at least in Star Trek?
Alexis Powell
Natural history enthusiast
ALON should be super hard, maybe similar to some aluminium oxides like sapphire. Sapphire isn't so great optically, or at least that's how I feel about uncoated sapphire watch crystals compared to glass watch crystals. Sapphire can be coated, so I imagine ALON can too.
--AP
Agreed that ALON should be mechanically very strong, and that coating shouldn't be a problem. I do wonder why this is called transparent aluminum while sapphire isn't, although sapphire has more Al by proportion.
Anyway, from what I can see it has similar transmission in the visible as sapphire (~85% in the visible, fair bit lower than glass), and while it's hard to eyeball off a graph, comparable dispersion (on the high side, certainly not like an "ED" glass). Unlike sapphire this is a ceramic, not a crystal, so it won't be birefringent and scattering will probably be higher.
