Metal-Mesh Optical Filter Technology for Mid IR, Far IR, and Submillimeter, Phase II

Lake Shore's proven track record in commercializing advanced technologies along with being an established supplier to NASA makes us confident we can further commercialize our metal-mesh filter technology upon developing standard multi-layer designs. Earth-based astronomy programs have a need and will continue to have a need for improved IR band pass filters, dichroic filters among other optical components. University astrophysics research, missle defense applications, and infrared, submillimeter, and Thz spectrometer manufacturing (improve broadband detector performance with filtering) are all markets that are actively growing and show a need for band-pass filters. Improvements in the detector sensitivity and format have enabled significant development of the capabilities in the far-IR and submillimeter spectral regime, in the last few years. Detector arrays have improved from hundreds to thousands or millions of pixels, which has led to rapid dispersive (i.e. diffraction-grating) spectroscopy of multiple sources in multiple far IR wavebands simultaneously. In astrophysics, sensitive far IR spectroscopy from actively-cooled space telescopes can reveal the history of galaxies, heavy-element production, and black-hole growth since the very first stars. There are a number of astronomy programs such as, SOFIA, SPICA/BLISS, SAFIR, SPIRIT that will use far IR spectrometers for optimal science discovery. Other projects such as CLARREO are designed to provide a measure of the earth's radiation budget, reveal distribution of key greenhouse gases, and probing the role of high altitude clouds could use sensitive far IR spectroscopy to improve its capabilities by orders of magnitude. More »