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Press Kit

Media contact

Mr. Frédéric Falise
English | French | German
media@scientificvisual.ch

About Sapphire

In this intro, we talk about Synthetic Sapphire. Unlike natural sapphires that are found in mines and cut into jewellery gemstones, the synthetic sapphire is created synthetically in laboratories for industrial purposes in large crystal boules.

Synthetic Sapphire, a single crystal aluminium oxide Al2O3, is an excellent material finding increasing uses in various fields.

The hardest of all oxide crystals, it shows a unique combination of optical, mechanical, chemical and physical properties. Its optical transmission quality strength and hardness, heat resistance, dielectric properties, insulating characteristics, chemical inertness and insolubility make this crystal material of choice for aggressive environments and new high-tech scientific and commercial applications. Also, because Sapphire has a hexagonal crystal structure, its optical characteristics change with the optic C-axis and it demonstrates birefringence, an additional appealing property for new high-tech uses.

Watch industry

Sapphire manufactured in bulk quantities and at commercially acceptable purity levels, is a material of choice for the luxury watches industry where it is used to produce high strength and hardness watch windows. It also has several other industrial uses in the form of rods, cubes, cones, vee jewels, orifice nozzles etc.

Optical elements

Sapphire of good optical quality finds wide applications in UV to mid-IR Optics where it is the substrate of choice. Its optical uses are limited only from its birefringence and high cost of a good polishing. Optical elements produced from standard optical quality Sapphire include Windows for High Temperature, Pressure, Corrosion, Abrasion and other demanding uses, Optical flats. Spacers, Thermo-couplers etc

Semiconductor circuits

When manufactured with excellent crystalline structure (at c, a and r-plane surface orientations) and with crystalline ensuring the absence of defects (fractures, slips, lineage, etc.), sapphire can be used for the booming field of fine substrates in the following technologies:

  • the growth of lll-V & ll-VI compounds to produce Green LED and GaN blue Laser Diodes
  • hybrid microelectronic applications,
  • IC microelectronic epitaxial deposition and especially for microwave IC’s,
  • transducer applications
  • the growth of superconducting materials.

Sapphire Applications

Sapphire substrates Silicon on sapphire wafers
Superconductor substrate,LED,Transparent electronic substrate
IR Detectors
Watch Industry Sapphire Watch glasses, watch cases, and gauge
Analytical applications UV and IR Optics- as infrared filters in military and industrial application
NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) tubes
Analytical chemistry – for mass spectroscopy, ICAP, and other systems
Sample preparation
Medical applications Endoscope lenses
Sapphire knives
Surgical tips
Aerospace FLIR(Forward Looking Infra Red) windows for sensors and other optics;
Windows for erosion resistance in salt and blowing sand environments
Countermeasures lamps: sapphire flash lamps are used in IRCM’s (Infra red countermeasures)
Optical applications High temperature and pressure windows
Illumination windows
Sapphire light guides – sapphire rods
Optical components: lenses, prisms and other laser and infrared optics

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