LightPath Technologies Awarded Phase 2 Funding in U.S. Defense Department Partnership to Qualify Additional Germanium Substitutes
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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