Photonics Dictionary

In the context of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, a wafer refers to a thin, flat disk or substrate made of a semiconducting material, usually crystalline silicon. Wafers serve as the...

The Weissenberg method, named after the German physicist Karl Weissenberg, is a technique used in x-ray crystallography for obtaining high-quality diffraction patterns from single crystals. This...

A common aberration in lenses covering large fields of view; it results in images of objects near the edge of the field being compressed in the radial distortion.

A wide-angle lens is a type of camera lens that has a shorter focal length than a standard or normal lens, allowing it to capture a broader field of view. Wide-angle lenses are characterized by their...

The maximum aperture of a lens at which it will still give a sharp image, even though its physical aperture may be larger.

An image intensifier that consists of an evacuated tube with a large input phosphor screen at one end. The phosphor screen is in contact with a light-sensitive photocathode that emits electrons....

Irradiation of a cylindrical crystal with an x-ray beam resulting in Bragg diffraction that produces a slightly enlarged image.

The arc formed when the rare gas xenon is excited electrically and emits a brilliant white light. Xenon is used to fill electronic and stroboscopic flashlamps, and also large discharge tubes for...

Zerodur is a type of glass ceramic material known for its exceptional thermal and mechanical properties, particularly its low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) close to zero. It was developed by...