LANCE: Largest Area Sapphire Available
Rubicon has developed a new net-shape sapphire crystal growth platform capable of growing very large area, thick windows – up to 36” x 18” x 1.5”– with excellent optical quality for defense, aerospace, semiconductor processing and other optical applications.
Other growth technologies that produce large-area sapphire crystals are incapable of generating the size and optical quality required for many new rugged defense and aerospace window applications. Rubicon’s LANCE (Large Area Net-Shaped Crystal Extraction) sapphire technology is based on the principals of the horizontal directional solidification method of growing crystals.
The technology produces rectangular slabs of sapphire that weigh ~150kg and are over 2” thick. With our large area slicing and grinding technology, we can produce window blanks as thin as 5mm and up to 1.5” thick and can produce as many as 6 full size windows per slab. With this throughput and high yields, LANCE sapphire is very cost effective for large area applications.
Initial applications for LANCE include windows for hypersonic, sensor suite, and electro-optic systems in defense and aerospace. Many other applications are developing that require protective windows able to maintain excellent transmission characteristics in the visible and IR including semiconductor processing, pyrometry and other rugged industrial applications.
