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Search for New Materials with Specific Optical and Physical Properties

15 Submissions
$15,000 USD
Challenge closed

Challenge overview

New materials are being solicited to replace special glass or other optical materials. Materials that offer advantages such as lower cost ease of processing and improved optical plus color properties and thermal stability will be highly favored.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

In industrial practice, glass is commonly machined mechanically in order to achieve the exact shape and surface quality, particularly when optical properties are required. If the glass is machined by grinding, the semi-product is designed in a way such that material removal is as low as possible. Glass is processed via the conventional method by molding technology under the feeder (effluent) from melting aggregate. There are optical materials on the market that cannot be molded in this way. Thus, they must be divided in the solid state (cut or sawed) which means high costs as they are difficult to process without large amounts of waste.

In addition, if glass is exposed to high temperatures, while processing, there are other negative effects, e.g. loss of color stability or shape stability – sharp edges and points. Alternative materials are being sought as replacements with improved properties.

This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following unique features:

  • There is a guaranteed award.  The awards will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $15,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $2,000.
  • The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker.  Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solvers grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal.

After the Challenge deadline, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers that submitted a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided

Use the slider to explore how the Challenge process works:

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