Where to Buy

Aspheric Optics

If you want to learn more, please visit our website.

Before You Buy: Learn About Aspheric Optics

Aspheric optical elements feature non-spherical surfaces that correct for spherical aberrations, enhancing image quality in devices such as cameras, telescopes, and microscopes. These optics often allow for fewer components and improved performance in optical systems, making them essential for high-precision applications.

Related product categories: free form optics, lenses, achromatic optics

Related product category: optical components and devices

With its comprehensive resources, RP Photonics helps you to well prepare purchase decisions:

• Encyclopedia article: Aspheric Optics
• Related article: lenses
• For responsible purchase decisions: apply good practices

Some aspects to consider before buying aspheric optics: precision of aberration correction, surface accuracy, material quality, manufacturing precision, coating options, compatibility with other optics, thermal stability, environmental resistance, ease of integration.

Manufacturers and Other Suppliers for Aspheric Optics

100 suppliers for aspheric optics are listed in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, out of which 7 present their product descriptions. Both manufacturers and distributors can be registered.

Note: You have Javascript disabled in your browser. While you can still use this page, some of the functionality is missing.

Users: if any displayed information is incorrect (e.g., a listed supplier does not offer such products) or legally problematic, please notify RP Photonics so that the problem can be solved.

Suppliers: you can report modified data using a form, which is provided via the button "Edit profile data" on your company profile page. You can obtain our advertising package for getting a much improved visibility and many more leads. (Tell your marketing people about it!)

Report additional suppliers for these products!

If you are a supplier and want to be listed, please use the registration form.

An already registered supplier can use a customized form to report the full list of offered photonics products. That form is reachable with a link at the bottom of the supplier's profile page.

Anyone, not only suppliers themselves, can report additional suppliers. If possible, please provide a web address showing that this supplier indeed offers such products.

Promote Your White Papers and Videos

White papers and videos are great instruments for creating an interest in your technology and demonstrating the capabilities of a company. But how to publicize them, reaching the right audience?

Our suggestion: place a preview in a suitable encyclopedia article! (That feature is offered as part of our advertising package.) For example, the paper preview shown above would well fit into our articles on laser diodes and diode bars.

If you like our Buyer's Guide, share it with your friends and colleagues, e.g. via social media:

On LinkedIn, follow our company page to keep track of our news!

Aspheric lenses for better vision and appearance

With aspheric eyeglass lenses, thin is in.

Advanced optical design technology allows aspheric eyeglass lenses to be made with flatter curves than conventional lenses, giving them a slimmer, more attractive profile.

Goto RuiQi to know more.

Conventional lenses have a front surface that is spherical, meaning it has the same curve across its entire surface, much like a baseball.

Aspheric lenses, on the other hand, have a more complex front surface that gradually changes in curvature from the center of the lens out to the edge.

Aspheric Lenses And Slimmer Profiles

Most aspheric lenses also are high-index lenses. The combination of an aspheric design with high-index lens materials creates a lens that is noticeably slimmer, thinner and lighter than conventional glass or plastic lenses.

Aspheric lenses have a slimmer profile for virtually all prescriptions, but the difference is especially dramatic in lenses that correct high amounts of farsightedness. Lenses that correct farsightedness (convex or "plus" lenses) are thicker in the center and thinner at their edge. The stronger the prescription, the more the center of the lens bulges forward from the frame.

Aspheric plus lenses can be made with much flatter curves, so there is less bulging of the lens from the frame. This gives the eyewear a slimmer, more flattering profile.

It also makes it possible for someone with a strong prescription to wear a larger selection of frames without worry of the lenses being too thick.

Eyeglass lenses that correct myopia (concave or "minus" lenses) have the opposite shape: they are thinnest at the center and thickest at the edge.

Though the slimming effect of an aspheric design is less dramatic in minus lenses, it still provides a noticeable reduction in edge thickness compared with conventional lenses for myopia correction.

Superior Optics With Aspheric Lenses

With conventional lens designs, some distortion is created when you look away from the center of the lens &#; whether your gaze is directed to the left or right, above or below.

Aspheric lens designs, on the other hand, reduce or eliminate this distortion, creating a wider field of view and better peripheral vision. This wider zone of clear imaging is why expensive camera lenses have aspheric designs.

A More Natural View Of The World &#; And Your Eyes

Because aspheric lenses have flatter curves than conventional lenses, they fit closer to your face. This is a major benefit for anyone wearing a strong correction.

Conventional spherical lenses with a strong prescription for farsightedness cause unwanted magnification. This makes objects appear larger and closer than they actually are. And because this magnifying effect goes both ways, conventional lenses for farsightedness also give the wearer's eyes an unnaturally magnified, "bug-eyed" look.

Conventional lenses for nearsightedness do just the opposite: They make things look smaller and give the wearer's eyes a small, "beady-eyed" appearance.

Aspheric lenses greatly reduce these undesired magnification and minification effects, so the world looks more natural to the wearer, and the wearer's eyes look more natural to everyone else.

Buying Eyeglasses With Aspheric Lenses

Aspheric designs are available in single vision lenses for the correction of nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, and in progressive lenses, bifocals and trifocals for presbyopia. Although most aspheric lenses are made from high-index materials, they are available in regular plastic, too.

Other enhancements &#; including photochromic lens technology &#; are available in aspheric lenses as well.

For several reasons, frame selection is important with aspheric lenses. In general, the best-looking eyewear results when the frame is not overly large and when the eyes are centered in the middle of the frame opening. Your eye doctor or optician will help you select the best type of frame to complement your new aspheric lenses.

Taking measurements for aspheric lenses requires greater care and skill on the part of the optician, but this requires only an extra minute or two.

Creating the complicated curves used in aspheric lenses makes these advanced lenses a bit more expensive than conventional lenses. But the outstanding cosmetic and visual benefits of these thinner, lighter lenses make them a good investment.

Since aspheric lenses are flatter and positioned slightly closer to the face than conventional lenses, some wearers may notice more reflections off the front and back surfaces of the lenses. For this reason, anti-reflective coating is highly recommended for all aspheric lenses.

Original version of this article was by Joseph L. Bruneni, FNA.