A super-polished, super-flat test mass for the gravity wave observatory being built by Caltech and MIT.

Creating precision optics

Staff at CSIRO Optics make objects that are almost perfectly round, flat or smooth.

• 1 December 2009 | Updated 7 March 2012

• Our expertise
• Using our expertise
• Our partners

CSIRO possesses world-class skills and facilities for the custom fabrication, coating and precise measurement of large and small precision optical components, assemblies and systems.

These components and systems are used in:

• astronomy and space
• semiconductors and photolithography
• fibre optics and photonics
• scientific research and education
• instrumentation.

Our expertise

We have fabrication skills in:

• machining, grinding, polishing and super-polishing hard-to-handle substances such as calcium fluoride, sapphire and lithium niobate
• assembly, including optical contacting, with nanometre precision and angular tolerances of 0.1 arc second
• manufacture of intricate and complex components with apertures from less than one millimetre to one metre
• correcting for distortions due to material inhomogeneity and coating stress using wavefront compensation.

We have specialised coatings techniques including:

• coatings with more than 60 layers
• metal and dielectric (insulating) coatings applied using ion assisted deposition with less than 0.2 per cent uniformity
• selective area deposition (one of our patented techniques)
• low loss, low stress and other specialised coatings.

We use coating techniques such as:

• fully automated dual ion beam sputtering
• ion beam milling
• reactive ion etching
• clean room facilities.

Our skills in precision metrology include:

• surface form with absolute uncertainty of a few nanometres over apertures of 400 millimetres and characterisation using power spectral density
• precision interferometry and scatter measurements of coated and uncoated substrates
• microroughness to sub-Angstrom resolution
• transmittance or reflectance from ultraviolet to infrared
• ellipsometric measurements at multiple wavelengths
• absolute measurement of sphere diameter and three-dimensional (3D) measurements to five nanometre uncertainty.

  We have been building custom-made optical components and systems for the world’s most demanding clients for over fifty years.

Using our expertise

CSIRO Optics staff make:

• flats
• spheres
• etalons
• cube corners
• miniature optics.

Flats are references for determining the flatness of a surface or for use in astronomy or long path length laser interferometers.

They vary from a few millimetres to one metre in diameter.

Our spheres are spherical to within 40 nanometres. 

Our spheres are used in the Avogadro Project which aims to redefine the kilogram.

Etalons are used in optical astronomy and Fabry-Perot narrowband filters. 

These filters are lightweight and can be fixed or tuneable.

Cube corners are ultra-precise retroreflectors for applications such as laser-based measurement systems.

Miniature optics are small optical components for photonics and telecommunications.

Our partners

We have been building custom-made optical components and systems for the world’s most demanding clients for over fifty years. 

We routinely work with:

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA
• the Anglo-Australian Observatory, Australia
• the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), USA
• Mt Stromlo Observatory, Australia
• the Australian National University, Australia
• the Imaging Magnetograph Experiment (IMaX) for the SUNRISE project based in Europe
• Hida Observatory, Japan
• Nikon, Japan
• The University of Sydney, Australia.

We also certify reference surfaces for standards laboratories around the world.

Find out more about the work carried out by CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering.