Plastic optical components

Details Plastic optical components Plastic optical components

1996-07-30

1998-07-14

Hampton-Hightower, P.

Stock material or miscellaneous articles

Composite

Of polyisocyanurate

528272, 528363, 528422, 525452, 525534, 427379, 385129, 385131, 359173, G02B 104, C08L 7904, C08G 7306

Patent

active

057801592

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention concerns optical elements made of plastic and in particular those made from polycyanurate resins.


BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Polymers are materials of increasing interest for optics, microoptics, integrated optics and microsystems engineering. They are thereby employed in optical components as well as in special optics, such as lenses, prisms, for the fixing of optical systems, as substrate materials for optical coatings and as transparent coating material for mirrors and lenses. Polymers can be utilized for optical fibers and for the generation of waveguide structures. Their general advantage lies in the favorable technological processability and their lower density in comparison with glass.
The application as waveguides, in particular, imposes manifold demands upon the polymer. The refractive index should be as variable as possible and capable of being adapted to certain substrates. In the case of an application in optical communications technology, small material absorptions at 1.3 and 1.55 .mu.m are required. The absorption losses resulting from volume defects (inhomogeneities, microbubbles) must be minimized. In addition to certain engineering requirements, such as coating production and the ability to be structured, particularly the thermal and thermo-mechanical stability, adjusted expansion coefficients and the very low degree of shrinkage are prerequisites for an application of polymers for waveguide structures in integrated optics.
The plastics thus far employed for optical applications are polymethacrylates and polycarbonates. Their refractive index is however, at 1.49 or 1.58, relatively limited and not directly variable. Both polymer classes exhibit an excellent optical transparency but however, due to their chemical structure, are not particularly thermally and thermo-mechanically stable. Polycarbonate, for example, is thus practically unusable at temperatures above 130.degree. C. due to its relatively low glass-transition range.
Other high-performance polymers exhibit glass-transition ranges (T.sub.g) of >180.degree. C. Examples of these include polyaryl ether sulfones, polyaryl sulfones, polyaryl ether ketones, polymides and polyether imides, which, compared with polymethacrylate and polycarbonate, are for the most part however more difficult to process. The application of these high-T.sub.g polymers for optical systems is described is described in various patent documents, for example, in JP-A 61-144,738, JP-A 61-005,986, DE-A 3,915,734, U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,555, EP-A 0,254,275, DE-A 3,429,074, DE-A 3,927,498, DE-A 4,228,853, DE-A 3,636,399. A further disadvantage of these systems is the comparatively high optical absorption at the wavelengths of 1.3 and 1.55 .mu.m relevant to communications technology.
The invention consequently addressed the problem of producing easily workable, thermally and thermo-mechanically stable polymers of variable refractive index and low absorption at 1.3 and 1.55, which are suitable for the manufacture of optical elements, as well as the optical elements manufactured from them.


SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This goal is achieved with an optical element of the type initially described, which is produced from a polycyanurate resin.
It was discovered, surprisingly, that polycyanurate resins are particularly well suited for the manufacture of optical elements with the desired properties cited above. These are for the most part known products from conventional polycyanate raw materials, as they are widely used in the plastics industry. Correspondingly, the starting materials, production processes and methods for processing these polycyanurate plastics are known.


DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Particularly suitable for the invented optical elements are polycyanurate resins which are obtained from the compounds shown below. ##STR1## in which R.sup.1 through R.sup.4, independently of each other, are hydrogen, C.sub.1 -C.sub.10 -alkyl, C.sub.3 -C.sub.8 -cycloalkyl, C.sub.1 -C.sub.10 -alkoxy, halogen or phenyl, in which

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