High-performance Optical Manufacturing

High-end equipment such as fusion ignition, synchrotron radiation, lithography machine, space exploration, reconnaissance and warning require to achieve a series of unprecedented extreme, various and complex performance. The key optical components, such as high energy/power laser elements, synchrotron radiation mirrors, mask plates and photolithographic objective, space exploration X-ray mirrors, are fatal to these systems to achieve the extreme performance of focusing, extremely high energy output, extremely high peak power, extreme size of beam focusing and pattern transfer with nano scale accuracy. In order to realize the extreme performance of these high-end equipment, the optical manufacturing of the key components is required to be high accuracy, low damage, low stress, clean manufacturing and integration of function and structure, and it is required to achieve high performance under the constraints of multiple physical parameters. The traditional optical manufacturing methods aiming at improving the accuracy are faced with challenges. It is urgent for optical manufacturing methods to realize the transformation from manufacturing accuracy to manufacturing performance. The study preliminarily summarizes the recent work of high performance optical manufacturing of optical components and ultra-precision parts. The characteristics of typical components made by high performance optical manufacturing techniques, optical manufacturing requirements and optical manufacturing technologies have been summarized. The connotation, key technologies and development trend of high performance optical manufacturing have been tried to be clarified. At the end of the paper, application examples of high performance optical manufacturing have been given. © 2023 Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.