High Strength, Optical Quality Spinel

The goal of this program is to scale up CeraNova's process for making fine-grain, high strength transparent spinel to produce increasingly larger windows for optical and mechanical properties characterization. Plans are to produce one inspection polished 11" x 11" x 0.5" window, one optically polished 16" x 16" x 0.8" window, and one inspection polished 24" x 24" x 0.8" window. Characterization of the optically polished window will include transmission (visible through the mid-wave IR), refractive index homogeneity and stress birefringence. In addition, mechanical test coupons will be produced for evaluation of equibiaxial flexure strength and optical test coupons will be produced for measurement of transmission and absorption coefficient.