Rhenium-iridium coating effect of tungsten carbide mold for aspheric glass lens

Recently, with increasing lightness and miniaturization of high resolution camera phones, the demand for aspheric glass lens has increased because plastic and spherical lenses are unable to satisfy the required performance. An aspheric glass lens is fabricated by high temperature and pressure molding using a tungsten carbide molding core; so precision grinding and coating technology for the molding core surface is required. In this paper, Aspheric glass lens for 5 megapixel 4 time zoom camera phone modules was developed. The grinding condition of the tungsten carbide molding core was found after applying design of experiments (DOE). Also, the ultra-precision grinding process was investigated under this condition by experiment. Rhenium-iridium (Re-Ir) coating was applied on the ground surface of the tungsten carbide molding core. The influence of Re-Ir coating was compared and evaluated. The surface roughness of the molding core were improved by application of Re-Ir coating on the surface of the tungsten carbide molding core. Aspheric lenses were also molded with the non-coated molding core and the Re-Ir coated molding core. The surface roughness of the aspheric glass lens improved by about 0.4 nm (aspheric surface) and 0.5 nm (plane surface).