LightPath Technologies : Wins Prestigious PRISM Award for Its New Freeform Optics

Technology to Enable Metaverse and LIDAR

ORLANDO, FL / ACCESSWIRE / January 28, 2022 / LightPath Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPTH) ("LightPath," the "Company," or "we"), a leading vertically integrated global manufacturer and integrator of proprietary optical and infrared components and high-level assemblies, today announced that its new freeform optics has won the 2022 Prism Award for Manufacturing. The Prism Awards is an annual international competition that honors the best new optics and photonics products on the market. Winners were announced on January 26, 2022 in San Francisco, CA, as part of the SPIE Photonics West one of the industry's most important events of the year.

Since 2008, SPIE, along with media partner Photonics Media, has presented awards to companies and individuals that are creating products that make a difference, solve problems, and improve life through photonics.

Sam Rubin, President and Chief Executive Officer of LightPath Technologies, said, "We take great pride in our new freeform optics technology winning the prestigious Prism Award, which is a celebration of the best technologies that our industry has to offer. I would like to congratulate our engineering, product development and marketing teams for their efforts in creating this new line of innovative optics. In October 2021, LightPath announced the addition of freeform optics to its portfolio of high performance, next-generation custom molded optical solutions. The market's reception has been overwhelming and we are actively engaging with incredible partners on many next generation consumer electronics, LIDAR, and defense technologies, just to name a few areas of considerable traction. For LightPath with its new freeform optics, LIDAR and the metaverse is becoming a reality and is expected to be integral to our global growth initiatives."

As part of the Prism Award entry, LightPath noted that its proprietary processes for manufacturing freeform optics and the inherent qualities of the materials used are the key to producing smaller and lighter augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) glasses that look more like conventional eyeglasses and less like the cumbersome and bulky AR/VR goggles of today, while traditional manufacturing methods make mass commercialization of freeform optics cost-prohibitive. Additionally, with freeform optics, LIDAR systems can achieve larger field of views and lower losses, which in turn translate to higher resolution images and the ability to extend detection distances. Through several years of intensive development and innovation, LightPath has developed a method to bring complex freeform optics to the mass market utilizing precision glass molding, thereby significantly lowering the cost of freeform optics, and reducing the cost of the next generation AR/VR goggles to price points that allow mainstream consumers to participate.

Freeform optics involve lenses with surface shapes that lack certain symmetrical attributes which make them more challenging to mass produce but provide improved aperture, field of view and miniaturization. By utilizing LightPath's proprietary molding technology, the Company can mass produce molded freeform optics, rather than fabricating optical elements individually, as it is done today by other manufacturers. High precision optical elements with freeform surfaces can offer the optimal solution in many high-performance optical applications by allowing more complex surface profiles that can provide beam shaping. Through the deployment of freeform optics, many optical systems can be miniaturized, and the number of elements reduced, resulting in optical systems that are smaller, lighter weight, and yield better performance than ever before.

Freeform optics are becoming a key element in applications such AR/VR, infrared and military optical systems and 3-D imaging and visualization. Many times, these systems require the higher performance and more compact form factor that freeform optics can provide, allowing increased flexibility and overall size, weight and power (SWaP) optimization. The adoption of freeform optics in such applications has been limited due to the manufacturing technology that, to date, could not be scaled economically. This is a problem that has now been solved by LightPath's leading expertise in molded optics. Using its proprietary molding technology, LightPath has shipped tens of millions of field devices over the last 25 years for many other lens and lens assembly product families.

Company Contacts:

Mark Palvino, VP of Global Sales
LightPath Technologies, Inc.
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Rob Myers, Product Manager
LightPath Technologies, Inc.
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Investor Contact:

Jordan Darrow
Darrow Associates
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