Advantages and Types of Silicone Lens

Silicon lens is a kind of optical lens made of liquid optical silicone, processed by LSR injection molding. The optical silicone lens can be used in industrial lighting, indoor and outdoor LED lighting, automotive headlights and LED screen displays, for example, AR/VR lens.

The optical lens is a common light distribution component in LED era, without this core light control component, we would feel like fluorescent lamps everywhere, and light would scatter randomly. Do you know what are the advantages and disadvantages of optical silicon lens?

Silicone Lens Advantages:

1. Temperature Resistance: -40 to 250°C, resistant to sudden cold and hot shocks.

2. Flexible material: Not easy to burst, excellent explosion-proof performance.

3. Non-toxic, low density, stable performance, up to 92% light transmittance and excellent weather resistance.

4. Almost residual stress-free, good elasticity, ensuring stable optical properties.

Silicone Lens Disadvantages

1. The cost of raw material is high, 1.5~3 times higher than PC lenses.

2. The immaturity of existing silicone lens injection molding technology has further increased the cost of silicone lens.

Therefore, the market niche for silicone lenses is mainly as below.

1. Lenses for aerospace type lighting fixtures.

2. Lenses for mining lamps or special lamps under flammable and explosive, harsh conditions.

3. Automotive, outdoor luminaires.

4. LED indoor lighting fixtures.

Yejia silicone, as the professional top manufacturer of LSR injection molding silicone lenses in China, has produced various kinds of optical silicon lenses, here we’ll list some of them for your reference.

Various kinds of optical silicon lenses

1. Silicone Linear Lens

Silicon linear imaging lens is a lens that enables linear imaging. Comparing to conventional linear lenses, the height of the silicon linear lens is greatly reduced, allowing for more possibilities in luminaire design and application, as well as cost savings.

2. Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) Silicon Lens

ADB silicone lenses are used for automotive headlights, adaptive optics is a method that automatically maintains focus when the light deviates from the focal point. The requirements of the ADB module show that it is not possible to use common optical materials such as glass or thermoplastic materials (PC, PMMA) for the inner lens of the ADB, and only silicone lens meets all these technical requirements. In fact, silicone optical components have a long history of application in other fields, but there are still some technical difficulties to be overcome in the field of ADB for vehicle lights.

84 light-guiding whiskers, each slim and fragile, and of different shapes, not at all like the conventional optical lenses we see, all of which can be seen with many light guide whiskers, the number of light guide whiskers corresponds to the number of partitions of the ADB, and the silicone lenses are drawn in a vertical direction, basically visible with an obvious under-cut design.

1. Mini LED Silicon Lens

Mini LED silicon lens is mainly used for LED screen displays, by using optical liquid silicone lens, the number of LEDs has been decreased by increasing the pitch between LEDs, therefore to lower the production costs.

2. Fly-eye Silicon Lens

The fly-eye silicon lens is an integrated arrangement of multiple small lenses, and the two fly-eye arrays are arranged in parallel so that the transmitted light is evenly distributed. The key to achieving uniform illumination using a double-row fly-eye lens array is to improve its uniformity and illumination brightness. The fly-eye lens is placed inside the machine for use in the light path system and is an important part of the reflective equipment. It is also a very useful optical element in the lighting system, which can be used to generate a uniform irradiance distribution.

3. TIR Silicon Lens

TIR lenses: total reflection technology + inter-media action, each light ray is utilized in a controlled manner, generally without secondary light spots and with a good looking light pattern.

The TIR silicon lens uses the principle of total reflection to collect and process light. It is designed to collect and reflect all the side light in front of the lens in a penetrating way, while the tapered surface collects and reflects all the side light, and the overlapping of these two types of light results in a perfect light utilization and a beautiful spot effect. The efficiency of TIR silicon lenses can reach over 90%, with the advantages of high light energy utilization, low light loss, small light collection area and good uniformity.

4. Silicon Convex Lens

Silicon convex lenses are made according to the principle of refraction of light. A silicone convex lens is a lens that is thicker in the centre and thinner at the edges. Convex lenses are divided into biconvex, plano-convex and concave-convex. Convex lenses have the effect of converging light and are therefore also called converging lenses, while thicker convex lenses have the effect of telescoping and converging, which is related to the thickness of the lens. Farsighted glasses are convex lenses.

5. Silicone Concave Lens

Silicon concave lenses, also known as negative spherical lenses, have a concave shape with a thinner centre and thicker edges, hence the name concave lens. Concave lenses have a diffusing effect on light. Myopic glasses are concave lenses. Concave lenses are divided into biconcave, plano-concave and convex-concave.

Besides above silicone lenses, Yejia silicone has also produced many customized optical lenses according to 3D drawings offered by customers. If you’re looking for customized silicon lens manufacturer, welcome to contact us.