Prisms are optical devices that can reflect, disperse, or split light. They are commonly made of materials such as glass, plastic, or fluorite, as long as the material is transparent and suitable for the desired wavelength. Prisms have different surface angles depending on their intended applications.

Balsam, specifically Canada balsam, is a resin obtained from the Canadian balsam tree. It is transparent with a pale yellow color and high viscosity. Canada balsam is often used as an adhesive in the production of lenses and microscope slides due to its optical quality and similar refractive index to crown glass. In prism manufacturing, it is used as an adhesive to bond calcite cut diagonally at 68 degrees for Nicole Prisms, which are used to generate and analyze planar polarization.

Prisms play a crucial role in optics and have applications in various fields such as photography, spectroscopy, and scientific research.

Mirrors play a crucial role in optics by reflecting light within specific wavelength ranges, finding applications across various industries like telescopes, lasers, cameras, and fields such as life sciences, astronomy, instrumentation, semiconductors, and solar technology.
ILLUCO specializes in crafting optical mirrors using diverse coating techniques. These mirrors are tailored to reflect either a broad spectrum of wavelengths or specific ranges, precisely catering to the requirements of each application.

An optical filter selectively allows light within specific wavelength ranges—colors—to pass through while absorbing the remaining wavelengths. Typically, these filters either permit the transmission of solely longer (longpass filter) or shorter wavelengths (shortpass filter), or they block both extremes, creating a band within a specific wavelength range (bandpass filter).

They find utility in various applications such as cameras, diverse optical instruments, color stage illumination, and even astronomy, where they restrict transmitted light to a particular spectral band of interest. Optical filters are critical in fluorescence-related practices like microscopy and spectroscopy.

ILLUCO boasts diverse filters, encompassing simple color glass filters to highly specialized narrow bandpass filters featuring robust coatings.

Optical coatings play a pivotal role in enhancing the performance of optical components. They reflect, guide, or filter light, minimize unwanted reflections, and safeguard the lens surfaces.

At ILLUCO, an array of coatings is crafted, ranging from fundamental anti-reflection coatings, which diminish surface reflections commonly found in glasses and photographic lenses, to sophisticated high reflector coatings that enable mirrors to reflect over 99% of incident light. Additionally, more intricate optical coatings, like dichroic thin films, exhibit high reflectivity within specific wavelength ranges while ensuring anti-reflection in others.

Optical lens design involves the creation of lens configurations that meet specific performance requirements while considering factors such as cost and manufacturing constraints.

The design process incorporates parameters such as surface radius, distance between surfaces, material selection, tilt and centering adjustments, and surface profiles (spherical, aspherical, hologram, diffraction, etc.). It is a computationally intensive task that models how light interacts with the lens.