Zinc Selenide (ZnSE) vs. Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) For Your Lens

Zinc Selenide (ZnSE) is the best material for infrared optics. However, the quality of ZnSE in China is very unpredictable.

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Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) has a more consistent quality in China as a raw material.  However, it is not as good as ZnSe, but it always beats bad bad ZnSe.

There are 2 types of ZnSe.

• CVD ZnSe (Chemical Vapor Deposition) is a process where the environment is maintained in a reactor to promote ZnSe crystal growth. 

• PVD ZnSe (Physical Vapor Deposition) is a process where ZnSe scraps are evaporated and then recombine into a solid.  PVD ZnSe has legitimate practical purposes, but Co2 laser optics is not one of them.

CVD ZnSe is only made in the USA.

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ZnSe has the lowest absorption rate for the CO2 laser wavelength. GaAs has slightly higher absorption rates but is harder than ZnSe so it’s better for use in dirty environments (and its thermal conductivity keeps crud deposits from heating/burning the lens).

GaAs does not pass visible light - like the red dot lasers that are used inline with the CO2 laser (using a beam splitter). It’s not common but I know someone here was using a red laser through the lens to get his aimpoint precisely aligned. A GaAs lens would make that light disappear.

in our lasers - no (if you have air assist). In high power lasers (>100W) due to its better thermal ability and when doing a lot of MDF cutting, the GaAs might be a better choice. In clean environments (including high power ones) ZnSe is better for delivering more of the beam power to the material since the thermal properties of GaAs are only needed to handle the heat caused by deposits on the lens - a clean environment (air assist) will keep the deposits away.

Frankly, it’s a minimal difference though and comes down to whether you need the toughness of the GaAs not as much as which delivers more power.

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