Strategic Defense Partnership Follows
Successful Phase 1 Qualification of Additional LightPath
Proprietary BlackDiamond™ Material Variants
ORLANDO,
Fla., Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- LightPath
Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPTH) ("LightPath," the "Company," or
"we"), a leading global, vertically integrated provider of thermal
imaging cores, custom optical assemblies, photonics and infrared
solutions for the industrial, commercial, defense,
telecommunications, and medical industries, today announced the
U.S. Department of Defense ("DoD") via the Defense Logistics
Agency, Strategic Materials ("DLA") has awarded Phase 2 funding to
support the qualification of additional LightPath Black Diamond ("BD") chalcogenide
glasses as substitute to germanium.
Qualification is a process in which suppliers demonstrate that
their materials meet the required specifications and performance
standards (MRL, Material Readiness Level) set by the DLA for use in
defense applications. DLA qualification funding is made in two
phases. The first phase of $250,000,
which commenced in July 2023, was
earmarked explicitly for 3 of LightPath's proprietary Black Diamond
glasses, licensed exclusively from the US Naval Research
Laboratories (NRL) as a substitute for Germanium. In this phase,
LightPath completed qualification of new materials, which are now
designed into several programs of record, and have completely
replaced Germanium in those programs.
The second phase covers the remaining six materials with funding
totaling approximately $0.5 million,
which will qualify the materials to MRL-9 (Material Readiness
Level), an important milestone for prospective defense customers.
These materials are all in addition to LightPath's BD6 material
which is already fully qualified and field deployed in multiple
systems.
LightPath's proprietary BlackDiamond materials can uniquely be
used instead of Germanium in infrared imaging systems while
concurrently offering superior performance, which addresses
end-customer supply chain concerns given the Chinese export
restrictions on Germanium announced in 2023. China controls the majority of the global
market for Germanium, with the U.S. relying chiefly on imported
Germanium for domestic use, driving an approximate 65% increase in
the price of Germanium since January
2023.
"We initiated Phase One of this qualification program with the
DLA after multiple stakeholders inside the DoD realized the urgent
need to find replacements for Germanium," said Sam Rubin, President and Chief Executive Officer
of LightPath. "Phase One was significant success, resulting in the
qualification of new proprietary BlackDiamond materials. These
materials are now designed into multiple programs of record and
demonstrate significant additional value beyond simply replacing
Germanium."
"These new materials exhibit unique properties such as a
negative thermo-optic coefficient, an important attribute for
making systems athermalized, enabling the design of devices that
are unaffected by temperature changes. These are also true
multi-spectral materials that can uniquely be used across all four
infrared imaging bands without the need for a separate camera for
each spectral band, as is the case with the legacy systems used
today. Due to the inherently superior qualities of our BD
materials, customers have been able to achieve better performance
alongside reduced size, weight and total systems cost as compared
to legacy Germanium-based systems.
"In Phase Two, LightPath will continue working with DLA to
qualify additional BD glasses to be included in DoD systems.
Additional qualification of BD glasses will expand the potential
use cases of our proprietary materials, leading to new,
cutting-edge designs, similar to the example demonstrated by
'Mantis', our multi-spectral camera. We look forward to progressing
our ongoing partnership as we seek to qualify our newest
proprietary BD materials with the DLA," concluded Rubin.
About LightPath Technologies
LightPath Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPTH) is a leading global,
vertically integrated provider of optics, photonics and infrared
solutions for the industrial, commercial, defense,
telecommunications, and medical industries. LightPath designs and
manufactures proprietary optical and infrared components including
molded glass aspheric lenses and assemblies, custom molded glass
freeform lenses, infrared lenses and thermal imaging assemblies,
fused fiber collimators, and proprietary Black Diamond™ ("BD")
chalcogenide-based glass lenses. LightPath also offers custom
optical assemblies, including full engineering design support. The
Company is headquartered in Orlando,
Florida, with manufacturing and sales offices in
Dallas Texas, Latvia and China.
LightPath's wholly-owned subsidiary, Visimid Technologies, was
acquired in July 2023, and
specializes in the design and development of customized infrared
cameras, for the industrial and defense industries. Such customized
cameras are often sold together with customized optical assemblies
from LightPath.
LightPath's wholly-owned subsidiary, ISP Optics Corporation,
manufactures a full range of infrared products from
high-performance MWIR and LWIR lenses and lens assemblies. ISP's
infrared lens assembly product line includes athermal lens systems
used in cooled and un-cooled thermal imaging cameras. Manufacturing
is performed in-house to provide precision optical components
including spherical, aspherical and diffractive coated infrared
lenses.
For more information on LightPath and its businesses, please
visit www.lightpath.com.
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SOURCE LightPath Technologies