Optical Transmission Properties of Acrylic

If you are using acrylic chambers due to its optical transmission properties and your ability to fully see the inside of your chamber, you will quickly notice from the chart that acrylic is 90% transparent to visible light equally across the visible spectrum. However, acrylic vacuum chambers cannot be used to detect and measure ultra violet light sources inside the chamber because regular acrylic is not transparent to Ultraviolet light.

An alternative is to select Ultraviolet Transmitting Acrylic (UVT Acrylic) as the building material for your chamber. However, after calling a few acrylic suppliers, you will quickly realize that there are no polymer suppliers that stock UVT Acrylic and that you will be forced to order batch quantities which will cost you thousands of dollars. A simple solution would be to get a viewport to go along with your chamber so that you can see ultraviolet light inside of your chamber.

Sapphire vacuum viewports or Silica vacuum viewports are hermetically sealed and a great choice. They come in several attachment methods and lens sizes.

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