Hat Tip: Imaging Resource
Yes, I realize the story is from Friday. I was busy this weekend. (I'm also busy working during the week at a physically demanding job. That's part of the reason I don't post regularly right now.)
Now, back to the fluorite (calcium fluoride).
Fluorite is a naturally occurring mineral that is mined from the earth. It's optical properties all it to be used to create lenses that suffer lower chromatic aberrations than glass-based lenses suffer. This obviously improves image quality.
The problem?
The vast majority of high-quality fluorite is mined in China.
The country has what amounts to a monopoly on the mineral. Any company that wants to buy pure fluorite in large amounts has to do business with that country.
A Japanese company (Iwatani Corp.) is attempting to develop a method for creating fluorite with a high enough purity for use in optical glass.
Iwatani developed a process for recycling the perfluorocarbon (PFC) gas created during the manufacturing of semiconductors. PFC gas is considered a harmful pollutant (it destroys ozone). The end result of this process is fluorite. Unfortunately, the fluorite created by this process lacks the purity necessary for optical uses.
The company recently announced it had been successful in creating highly purified fluorite, but the processing cost is currently cost prohibitive. (The resulting product is twice that of mined fluorite.)
It is now working on ways to decrease production costs.
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