LightPath Technologies produces optical solutions that enable its customers to gain a competitive advantage. These solutions include Chalcogenide materials, visible and infrared (IR) components, imaging assemblies and multispectral IR camera cores.

For over 35 years, LightPath Technologies has provided top-tier clients in the industrial, defense, automotive, public safety, communications, and medical markets with optics and photonics solutions. LightPath provides customized assemblies with complete engineering design assistance for both optics and mechanics, ensuring the highest quality, performance, and manufacturability while enabling efficient integration at a competitive cost.

LightPath Technologies has three global manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and Asia. All sites are ISO 9001:2015 certified and the company’s locations in North America and Europe are both ITAR-registered.

The company has long been seen as an innovator within the field of optics, with significant intellectual property covering both materials and methods of production.

LightPath was originally in the business of providing aspheric components and specially crafted lenses to other producers of optical systems. Only in the last few years, the company began to move to more value-add by producing customized solutions and complete imaging systems. The company refers to its business evolutions in stages and is currently progressing from phase 2.0 to 3.0:

LightPath 1.0 – Components Supplier

LightPath 2.0 – Optical Solutions Provider

LightPath 3.0 – Creator of Complete Imaging Systems

Other benefits of partnering with LightPath to create full imaging systems include the following:

• Highly engineered customization with optical design
• Cost-effective processes including precision glass molding
• Production scale from prototypes to commercial volume

Listed on the company’s website are a great deal of vertically integrated aspects, including Chalcogenide Glass, a variety of manufacturing processes, high performance coatings, Thermal Imaging Assemblies and the MANTIS IR multispectral camera^® to name a few.

The company has maintained its influential OEM supply position beyond technological innovation by striving to be their customers’ preferred partner for optical solutions.

An Overview of selected products at LightPath

LightPath has been manufacturing two chalcogenide materials in its facility for around ten years. Recently, the company and NRL (Naval Research Labs) entered into an exclusive license arrangement for LightPath to commercially produce nine additional chalcogenide glasses.

“These materials are really bringing a new level of innovation to infrared imaging, therefore reducing the dependence on traditional crystal materials like germanium,” said Sam Rubin.

Germanium is primarily imported from Russia and China. With LightPath’s US made chalcogenide glasses the company can minimize any supply chain issues inherent with the use of germanium.

Black Diamond Chalcogenide BD6™

LightPath’s Black Diamond BD6^TM glass is a great alternative to germanium in high-performance applications.

The advantages of BD6™ glass are as follows:

• Solid performance with high transmission over the 1-14 µm waveband
• Lower Material Weight (13% lower than Ge)
• Optical athermalization with lower dn/dT
• Can be diamond-turned, polished, or molded (manufacturing scales easily).

The Future of LightPath

LightPath Technologies continues to leverage its expertise and expand its capabilities. One example of this is the exclusive material usage license granted by the US Naval Research Laboratories (NRL) which today are being used in multispectral assemblies.

The company is looking to leverage its proprietary materials’ unique capabilities and characteristics to induce potential customers to partner with them early in their design process.

Speaking on the company’s new MANTIS camera^® and the uniqueness of it compared to other similar products in the market, CEO Sam Rubin stated, “It’s an absolutely exciting product. Today, short-wave, mid-wave, and long-wave represent three different wavebands and products. We have taken a long-wave camera and extended it to work in the other bands; therefore, you are getting to see more in one scene than before. See more, learn more, and the cost is also drastically reduced due to using the company’s materials and technology.”

A brief bio of the President and CEO of LightPath Technologies, Sam Rubin

Prior to joining LightPath, Mr. Rubin held a senior executive role at Thorlabs, where he was responsible for Thorlabs’ Imaging Systems Division, a standalone organization with its own sales and marketing, as well as global responsibility for all of Thorlabs’ Life Science activities. Prior to joining Thorlabs, Mr. Rubin co-founded XLight Photonics, an optical communication startup, which was later sold to a telecommunications private equity firm.

Mr. Rubin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from Ben Gurion University, a Master of Business Administration degree from New York University’s Stern School of Business, and is a graduate of the Executive Education Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.

“Photonics is starting to be commonplace within every application in every industry. We are enabling photonics to be more readily available for companies that could not touch it before.”