Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Materials Science and Engineering
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. John Ballato
Committee Member
Dr. Stephen Foulger
Committee Member
Dr. Igor Luzinov
Committee Member
Dr. Thomas W. Hawkins
Committee Member
Dr. J. David Musgraves
Abstract
The growth and advancement of infrared optical systems for thermal imaging, multi-band imaging, hyperspectral imaging, medical diagnostics, and chemical sensing are pushing the material science community to better understand existing materials while also developing new materials. Additionally, the thermal imaging market continues to grow, and system designers are continually being asked to reduce size, weight, and power while reducing costs (SWaP-c). Market growth has shifted optics manufacturing towards higher volume processes such as precision glass molding, but this does require most materials to be recharacterized due to property changes resulting from the process. Affecting the SWaP-c requirements, manufacturing tolerances are increasingly a concern and become unreasonable. Systems increase in complexity without materials or manufacturing process improvements, increasing costs for a built system. There is evidence that having more material options for designers can reduce the SWaP-c, including the manufacturing tolerances, but there is a significant lack of optical materials available to optical designers in the infrared wavelength space.
This dissertation addresses the advancement of optical system needs by first characterizing the uncertainty of minimum deviation refractometry, commonly used in industry for measuring the refractive index of infrared materials. This thereby shows that many facets of uncertainty can be used as measurement offsets with additional sample and material information. A reduction of uncertainty in the measurement has the potential to relax other tolerances in an optical design.
In the theme of SWaP-c, where possible, materials developed should be considered for precision glass molding. This high-throughput hot-forming process changes the thermal history of glass. This work explores thermal history and cooling rates ranging from very slow ultra annealing to rapid cooling from a precision glass molding process for arsenic selenide glass. This explored range shows a rarely observed deviation from the proposed linear relationships of properties to cooling rates. This work proposes a method of determining the material property, glass transition temperature (Tg), which minimizes the measurement’s dependence on various thermal histories. This same technique is used to show an adaptation to a technique that finds a temperature that is representative of the resulting glass structure from various thermal histories, known as fictive temperature (Tf).
Finally, this dissertation expands the current knowledge of the well-studied germanium-arsenic-selenium non-oxide chalcogenide glass family. It systematically explores the full glass-forming range regarding properties needed for first identification of use as an infrared material and with precision glass molding.
Recommended Citation
Wachtel, Peter F. II, "Physical and Optical Properties of the Germanium-Arsenic-Selenium Glass Forming Region for Precision Glass Molding and Infrared Optics" (2026). All Dissertations. 4247.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4247
Author ORCID Identifier
0009-0001-9879-9791
Included in
Other Materials Science and Engineering Commons, Semiconductor and Optical Materials Commons