LightPath Licenses Lens Tech to China Fab

An optical materials provider in China will produce LightPath Technologies Inc.’s proprietary lenses under a new five-year licensing deal, the company announced Thursday.

NHG (Hubei, New HuaGuang Information Materials Co. Ltd.) will make and distribute LightPath’s Gradium glass lenses in Asia. Gradium lenses are made from proprietary axial gradient-index glass, with refractive qualities that can be manipulated to reduce spherical aberrations and yield performance similar to single-term aspheres, the company said.

The lenses, applied as either singlets or doublets in complex multi-element systems, are suitable for high-power industrial laser systems in end markets such as laser cutting, marking and welding.

LightPath also reiterated its plans to branch out from the visible to the infrared optics market by developing a low-cost manufacturing technique for producing IR optics. Commercial sales will begin in the fourth quarter of 2012 for applications including industrial inspection, automotive safety, chemical and biological sensing and security and surveillance.

For more information, visit: www.lightpath.com