Design of visible/long-wave infrared dual-band imaging optical system

An efficient small size and low weight optical lens system covering the visible and long-wave infrared dual-band is designed. The chromatic aberration caused by the wide bands from visible to long-wave infrared is one of the tough problems though large efforts have been done in the related communities. In this paper, for materials used as the base of the achromatic design, we choose two suitable materials (Zns and Kbr) that allow transmission both of visible and long-wave infrared (LWIR) light. Though the two materials have proved the ability to correct three wavelengths for each spectral range, the correction from the materials compensation is not enough and aspheric even diffractive surface was selected to join this optical system for reducing the aberration. The design results show a good image quality for infrared band imaging while the corresponding visible imaging is acceptable to be used to extract the outline of objects.