Its high resistance to thermal shock makes it the prime material for high power CO2 laser systems.

ZnSe is only 2/3 the hardness of ZnS multispecral grade, but the harder antireflectance coatings serve to protect ZnSe.

ZnSe’s cost is about the same as ZnS multispectral grade.

Generally more expensive than Ge.

ZnSe is diamond turnable.

Typeical application:Thermal imaging, FLIR.

Products manufactured:Lenses, Aspheric Lenses, Binary (diffractive) Lenses, Windows, Optical Beamsplitters and Optical Filters, Prism.

Surface finish:Typical specifications for surface quality in the infrared are 40-20 or 60-40 scratch dig in the 0.8 to 7μm spectral region and 60-40, 80-50 or 120-80 scratch-dig for the 7 to 16μm area, depending upon system performance requirements. Diamond Turned surface finishes of 150 Angstroms rms or better are typical.

Surface figure:In the infrared, typical required surface figures range from 1/2 wave to 2 waves @0.6328 μm depending on the system performance requirements.

AR coating options:Typical available coatings for ZnSe include BBAR for 0.8 to 2.5μm, 3 to 5μm, 1 to 5μm, 8 to 12μm, and the 3 to 12μm spectral regions and single wavelength coating AR at 10.6μm. Many other specialized wavelength bands are possible within the 0.6 to 16μm range.