Affordable 3D printed optics with nanoparticle enhanced optical and opto-mechanical performance

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Butterworth, Charlie and Christopher, Jay and Walker, Dickon and Cunningham, Margaret Rose and Rooney, Liam and McConnell, Gail and Bauer, Ralf (2026) Affordable 3D printed optics with nanoparticle enhanced optical and opto-mechanical performance. In: SPIE Photonics Europe 2026, 2026-04-12 - 2026-04-16.

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Abstract

A method for creating achromatic lenses using affordable consumer grade 3D printing is presented, using nanoparticle doping of photopolymerization resins to enhance the refractive index of consumer grade polymer resins. Zirconium dioxide particles with 5 nm diameter are used to enhance the refractive index of a consumer grade resin from 1.504 to 1.516 and changing the material Abbe number from 60.6 to 50.5, with the detailed characterization approaches being presented. An achromatic doublet lens was created using the nanoparticle enhanced and unaltered resin, leading to a reduced chromatic focal shift from around 870 μm to 150 μm for a 30 mm focal length lens compared to a plan-convex singlet lens with same prescription.

ORCID iDs

Butterworth, Charlie ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0380-0642, Christopher, Jay ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-0707-8947, Walker, Dickon ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2071-2105, Cunningham, Margaret Rose ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6454-8671, Rooney, Liam ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2237-501X, McConnell, Gail ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7213-0686 and Bauer, Ralf ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7927-9435;
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