An analytical study of thermal invariance of polymeric nanolayer gradient index optical components Howard Fein*, Michael Ponting Peak Nano Optics, 7700 Hub Parkway, Valley View, Ohio 44125 ABSTRACT Specially formulated Gradient-Index polymeric optical materials offer capabilities not possible in conventional GRIN or homogenous optics. A novel technology that enables large scale processing of nanolayered polymer films into real, performance-enhancing lenses and other optical components for Defense-related optical systems is currently being employed. Polymeric nanoLayer GRIN materials (LGRIN) offer the ability to design and fabricate optics with custom gradient refractive index profiles in optical components up to 90 mm in diameter and approaching 5 cm thick. High performance achromatic singlet lenses were designed using specially developed ZEMAX design tools and exceptionally high quality lenses were fabricated from the LGRIN materials. Optical performance of LGRIN optics is shown to be significantly better than with conventional monolithic optics while also significantly reducing optical system mass, volume, and optical element count. Understanding the thermal behavior of such optical components is essential to their operational capability. An experimental study of the effects of elevated operational environments to validate the feasibility of deploying LGRIN optics into real-world operational environments was carried out. Interferometric and physical measurements of structure and optical performance of LGRIN lenses was completed over a 30 o – 50 o C temperature range. It is shown that nanolayered LGRIN optics and components exhibit no significant variation in optical performance with temperature as compared with commercial, homogenous acrylic optics in the designed operational thermal range. Keywords: GRIN, polymeric GRIN, Nanolayer polymer, GRIN Optics, Polymer GRIN Optics 1. INTRODUCTION Gradient index (GRIN) optical materials have enabled the fabrication of lenses whose capabilities far exceed those achievable by homogeneous optical materials [1, 2]. GRIN lenses can be fabricated to give significant corrections of classical Spherical, Chromatic, Astigmatic, and Comatic aberrations, as well as allowing exceptional optical performance to be achieved in concert with both spherical and aspherical surface forms. There are a number of well known methods of producing GRIN optics with axial, radial, and distributed GRIN profiles such as diffusion, sol-gel, stacked-glass-layer, and others[3]. These GRIN materials have always been constrained to a small subset of GRIN profile geometries, with small diameters, between some minimum and some maximum index value without allowing inflection. Revolutionary performance could be achieved if GRIN materials could be designed with a “custom tailored” approach as unconstrained with unlimited GRIN profile and inflection throughout the optical material volume to address specific optical performance parameters, and then be fabricated into lenses for real-world applications. If such optical lenses could also be made significantly lighter, then many advanced applications problems could be addressed and solved with real components. *hfein@Peaknano.com; phone: 1-216-264-4818; Peak Nano.com