Schott Marks 2 Milestones

Schott Worldwide celebrated its 125th anniversary, and the 40th anniversary of its Advanced Optics facility in Duryea, Pa., at SPIE Photonics West by introducing several new products to the North American market.

Schott Advanced Optics presented new diffractive optical elements for laser beam shaping applications and special short flint glasses especially suited for high apochromatic microscopy lenses. The company's Electronic Packaging business introduced a new hermetic transistor outline (TO) product capable of handling Fibre Channel applications of 17 Gb/s, while the Fiber Optics business was touting the increased capacity (now doubled to 300 sq mm) of its one-piece faceplates used for large-format medical, military and commercial applications.

Schott Advanced Optics was Schott Worldwide's first manufacturing facility in the US and today is the only melting facility for optical glass in the country. The business is marking not only Advanced Optics' 40 years in Duryea, but the 40th anniversary of its Zerodur zero-expansion, high-homogeneous glass ceramic used in applications such as astronomy, lithography, measurement technology and mechanical and optical systems.

Schott's Zerodur glass ceramic on display at Photonics West 2009. The piece weighed nearly 6000 lbs. (Photo: Photonics.com)

Drawing attention at the Schott booth at Photonics West was the very large piece of Zerodur on display. The piece weighed nearly 6000 pounds and needed to be put in place via forklift.

"We're reinvigorating Zerodur on our 40th anniversary. It happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of our Duryea [Pa.] facility also," said Stephen Krenitsky, vice president, Advanced Optics, Schott North America Inc.

"Everybody buys high-homogeneity materials that are developing precision optical instruments, but we've made a commitment to really support this industry in a dramatic way by large investments in process and capabilities. Just recently we upgraded a lot of our capabilities for these types of optical elements. We've defined the areas that we wanted to focus in besides our normal traditional business, and really concentrated our energies into that," Krenitsky said.

A major attraction for Schott's new diffractive optical elements (DOEs) is that they can be mass-produced by a new precision molding process adapted from the high precision glass molding techniques used in the production of the company's aspherical lenses. DOEs are used in hand-held miniprojectors, medical lasers and other devices that require rectangular laser intensity distribution in a compact size.

New products are not Schott's only focus, however.

"We've put a huge emphasis on customer service. We've really ramped up our customer service and balanced inventory to serve the market better," Krenitsky said. One result of its emphasis on customer service is its on-time delivery performance improved from about 72 percent to 98-99 percent. Also, because the company makes its own glass, it is uniquely positioned to provide customers across its business units with complete solutions in-house.

Its laser materials portfolio for laser applications is also becoming more of a focus for both Advanced Optics in Duryea and the division worldwide.

"We've always done the large laser projects, but we also have a commercial laser business. We're really tailoring the product portfolio for a whole host of laser applications that are based on our glasses, the active lasers and the passive materials for beam systems, for windows, coatings, etc. to supply a whole range of products that would be used for laser applications. We are working on some additional new materials for active lasers, and that research is being done at our facility in Duryea," Krenitsky said.

For more information, visit: www.us.schott.com

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PHOTONICS WEST 2009