Melting technology of chalcogenide glass for infrared thermal imaging system

Chalcogenide glasses is an ideal infrared transmitting optical material, were widely applied in the area of infrared thermal imaging which requires chalcogenide glasses not only have properties advantages for example larger transmission and better homogeneity and larger size, but also have processing characteristic with large volume and low cost. The key to effective satisfied above mentioned requirements is glass's melting technology. The vaccum melting technology in sealed ampoule and vacuum/atmosphere melting technology in crucible and their equipments were introduced. Specially a new chalcogenide glass melting method was mentioned and explained, which was a second melting protected with atmosphere, the influences on transmitting diagram and internal optical character and homogeneity melted with atmosphere protective were analyzed in detail. Glass's transmission was closed to those melted in sealed ampoule, in addition the internal optical character and homogeneity were improved via second melting protected with nitrogen atmosphere which purity is 99.999%.