Optical lenses
Client: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI
Magazine: 5232 — The magazine of the Paul Scherrer Institute
Issue 2/2019
Mirror-smooth lenses
For the magazine 5232 – a publication of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland – I was allowed to contribute two illustrations for the double page of the sections The Product & The Little Helper. The two research topics of the sections always have one detail in common. In this case, it was microscopically small optical lenses, such as those used in smartphones. The big challenge is to produce really good images despite their tiny size of just a few millimetres (see right-hand side). To achieve this, it is important that the lenses are beautifully polished – and researchers have come up with a trick that is presented on the left-hand side: They specifically melt the molds of the lenses with a very ordinary hot plate, whereupon the top layer smooths itself out as if by magic. The result is a perfect lens mold, polished almost to the atomic level.
