Originally Posted by
vfpamp
I wouldn't know which US optical labs are working with good poly. We work more closely to the precision optics folks in China that make lenses for scientific equipment (microscopes, telescopes, etc). But, the samples I have achieve Abbe of 43-47, at indexes of refraction of 1.55–1.56 and better scratch resistance than Trivex at a slightly higher UV protection on our tests. What attracted us to this particular technology was the fact that the remaining chromatic aberration was concentrated in the 400-500nm range (violet). The material's index of refraction is 1.56+/-0.5 from 500nm to 830nm but 158 at 400nm. This is particularly good for green/red calibration of devices. To the best of my understanding, the property comes from the use of carbonyl sulfide instead of the usual thiols and phosgene polymerization method. Looks like it's also a "greener" option to the manufacturing of polycarbonate (at least, that's what they sell).
The Abbe number (more precisely, the index of refraction per wavelength of the material) is what makes it "objectively better" for me. But I expect every optician to have their own usually-contrasting notions of "better".