Optical materials abbreviations
Optics / Photonics is an expert field, it is not always easy for a new comer to grab the meaning of all the abbreviations commonly used. In this post we provide a chart for the most common ones to ease communication between stakeholders.
Optical materials abbreviations chart
This chart shows corresponding abbreviation with full name of what it relates to, sorted alphabetically for easy reading.
| Abbreviation | Meaning | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 7979 / 7980 / 8655 | Corning’s HPFS (High Purity Fused Silica) | Common synthetic quartz reference in the US |
| B270 | Schott crown glass sold in plates | One of cheapest optical material |
| BaF2 | Baryum Fluoride | UV to 12µm transmission |
| BF33 | Borofloat 33 : Schott’s Borosilicate 3.3 | according to ISO 3585 |
| BK7 | Schott optical glass | refer to our optical glass chart for details and equivalents |
| CaF2 | Calcium Fluoride | Wide transmission spectrum from UV to Mid-IR |
| FS | Fused silica | Also reffered to as synthetic quartz |
| Float | Float glass. refers to soda-lime glass manufactured in plates | Used for common home windows. “Float” refers to the manufacturing process where glass floats on top of liquid tin. |
| Ge | Germanium | The material for thermal IR transmission |
| H-K9L | CDGM optical glass | refer to our optical glass chart for details and equivalents |
| IRG206 | NHG’s Se60As40 chalcogenide glass | Good thermal IR alternative material |
| ITO | Indium Tin Oxyde | Used only as a thin metal layer on other substrates |
| JGS1 / JGS2 / JGS3 | High to low OH- content Fused Silicas | Common fused silica grades in China and Japan |
| K9 | Common glass crystal in China | ! : often wrongly used instead of H-K9L |
| KBr | Potassium Bromide | nice optical material except that is it highly soluble in water |
| MgF2 | Magnesium Fluoride | Used for high power UV |
| Si | Silicon | Not to confond with Silicone |
| TPX | Polymethylpentene (PMP) | Mitsui registered trade mark |
| XG glass | Corning Eagle XG glass | Widely used for screen windows |
| ZnS | Zinc Sulfide | False brother of ZnSe |
| ZnSe | Zinc Selenide | False brother of ZnS |
Quick tip
For chemical abbreviation, to avoid “faux pas” respect the capital letter as the first letter of an element. Se stands for Selenide while SE stands for Sulphur + Erbium.
*: Corning / NHG / Schott / CDGM refers to leading glass manufacturers names.
Optical glass abbreviation
An entire page is need for optical glass names ( Lak3 / FK71 / Bak7 etc..), please click on the link to visit our optical glass table.
Other abbreviations
To learn more about other abbreviation used in optical specifications like S/D, follow the link to our page on ISO10110 specifications.
Other ressources on optics
