Abstract
Thermal infrared cameras have been conducted actively in various application areas, such as military, medical service, industries and cars. Because of their characteristic of sensing the radiant heat emitted from subjects in the range of long-wavelength($3{\sim}5{\mu}m$ or $8{\sim}12{\mu}m$), and of materializing a vision system, when general optics materials are used, they don't react to the light in the range of long-wavelength, and can't display their optic functions. Therefore, the materials with the feature of higher refractive index, reacting to the range of long-wavelength, are to be used. The kinds of materials with the characteristic of higher refractive index are limited, and their features are close to those of metals. Because of these metallic features, the existing producing method of optical systems were direct manufacturing method using grinding method or CAD/CAM, which put limit on productivity and made it difficult to properly cope with the increasing demand of markets. GASIR, a material, which can be molded easily, was selected among infrared ray optics materials in this study, and the optical system was designed with two Aspheric lenses. Because the lenses are molded in the environment of high temperature and high pressure, they require a special metallic pattern. The metallic pattern was produced with materials with ultra hardness that can stand high temperature and high pressure. As for the lens mold, GMP(Glass Molding Press) of the linear transfer method was used in order to improve the productivity of optical systems for thermal infrared cameras, which was the goal of this paper.
