Where to buy polarizers; wire grid, absorptive, polarizing cubes, thin-film polarizers, dichroic polarizers, manufacturers and suppliers
- ️Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta
- ️Fri Mar 28 2025
Buying Polarizers
Top-level product category: 
optical components and devices
More specific product categories: fiber-optic polarizers, thin-film polarizers
Optical polarizers include absorptive (dichroic) polarizers made of polymers or glasses, polarizing cube beam splitters, thin-film polarizers, and wire grid devices. They vary in power losses, power handling capability, polarization extinction ratio, usable wavelength range, angular range, and wavefront distortions.
Making Good Purchase Decisions
As the most professional photonics purchasing portal, RP Photonics helps you to not only to find all relevant suppliers (not limited to our advertisers), but also to make good purchasing decisions.
NEW: Structured Decision Process
Purchasing involves a lot of responsibility. We recommend that you apply best practice by using the following structured process: Go through the following expandable sections, complete the form and finally come to a purchase decision. You can then print that to a PDF for documenting the process.
Our article on best practices for purchasing and another one explaining this tool give you valuable insights.
1. Understand the technical background
2. Define your requirements
It is essential to fully understand and clearly define your requirements before you buy.
We recommend that you develop a list of clear specifications according to your specific needs, against which you can later check the suitability of found product offers:
To help you, we have already listed some aspects we recommend you consider when buying polarizers. Of course, there may be other aspects that are relevant to your specific case.
This list is for your own preparation, and can later (possibly in modified form) be used for quotation requests to suppliers.
Otherwise, you will need to talk to your technical colleagues.
If you cannot sufficiently clarify your requirements, you may want to get technical consultancy from RP Photonics.
You find these buttons in the supplier list below or under "3. Find suitable suppliers".
3. Find suitable suppliers
We suggest three steps:
- Below, you can find our list of suppliers for polarizers. Use the checkboxes to mark possibly suitable suppliers.
- The selected suppliers will appear below this list, along with your list of specifications. You can then indicate which specifications they meet according to your research. (You should finalize your specifications before doing this.)
- Based on the results, you can finally choose a supplier that is hopefully a good enough fit.
Selected suppliers:
(none so far)
Decision
The most suitable supplier you found:
Comments, e.g. reasons for your choice, or things which still need to be checked:
Additional Resources
See also the application note on Introduction to Polarization from Edmund Optics!
126 suppliers for polarizers are listed in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, out of which 11 present their product descriptions. Both manufacturers and distributors can be registered.
 Your sidekick for laser optics development OPTOMANUkmerges g. 427 14185 Vilnius Lithuania |  OPTOMAN offers thin film polarizers, that are the optimal choice for polarizing high energy laser light. Thin film polarizers accomplish this task with a high efficiency level due to negligible absorption within the coating, transmittance (Tp) higher than 99%, and reflectance (Rs) as high as 99.99%. OPTOMAN will provide an optimal solution in terms of extinction ratio (10'000:1 is possible), angle of incidence (various choices depending on application), and damage threshold (>49.4 J/cm2 @ 1064 nm, 10 ns, 100 Hz can be achieved in some configurations). Broadband configurations for femtosecond applications are also feasible. Standard in-stock IBS coated polarizers can be found in OPTOSHOP. Product-specific web page |
 Lasers, Optics, Electronics. Made in Germany. ALPHALAS GmbHBertha-von-Suttner-Str. 5 37085 Göttingen Germany |  Most types for crystal polarizers like Glan–Taylor, Rochon, crystal wedge etc. covering the spectral range from 170 nm to 6 µm are available from stock. Thin-film polarizers used at Brewster or 45° angle of incidence feature high damage threshold and can be used for demanding applications. ALPHALAS also offers customer-specific polarizers. Product-specific web page |
 Your Custom Optics Expert Shanghai Optics Inc.425 Main St Suite 2E Metuchen, NJ 08840 United States |  At Shanghai Optics we produce some of the highest quality dichroic polarizers. Our dichroic plate beamsplitters are manufactured with a special design and proprietary manufacturing approach, allowing us to attain steep edges and flat, high reflection and transmission bands. The almost complete transmission and reflection provided by our dichroic polarizers means that very little stray light gets through the imaging system. This results in high contrast image and a very good signal to noise ratio, as compared to other polarizers. Our dichroic polarizers feature a UV grade fused silica, JGS1, or JGS2 substrate, coated with a hard dielectric coating. These glass polarizers have a much higher damage threshold than their plastic counterparts, and are suitable for precision applications. Our coatings fully meet MIL-STD-810F and MIL-C-484971 requirements, and we have a variety of different options available. Product-specific web page |
 A635, Boke Mansion No. 9 Xiyuan Road Xihu District, Hangzhou 310030 China |  Hangzhou Shalom EO offers a full portfolio of off-the-shelf and custom polarizers, comprising: Glan laser polarizers, Glan–Taylor polarizers, Glan–Thompson polarizers, Wollaston prisms, Rochon prisms, polarization plane rotators, and achromatic depolarizers. Shalom EO utilizes various birefringent crystals including Calcite, Alpha-BBO, YVO4, MgF2, and quartz, with their transmission spectrum spanning from UV, VIS, to IR to fabricate our non-cubic polarizers. Anti-reflection coatings (single layer MgF2 coating, broadband AR coating, and laser line wavelength V coating) and protective coatings are available both as standard and custom versions. Unique designs of the construction of the polarization optics are accessible, including air-gap, cement, black glass, and escape ports. In addition, Shalom EO also supplies polarizing beamsplitter cubes (PBS cubes) with a maximum extinction ratio of Tp / Ts = 10000:1, high laser damage threshold, and minimized scattering loss. A set of waveplates and retarders are available as well, such as super achromatic/achromatic waveplates, zero order waveplates, liquid crystal polymer waveplates. Product-specific web page |
 1100 US-22 North Plainfield, NJ 07060 United States See us at LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth B1.171B)! |
Avantier produces high-quality dichroic polarizers with steep edges and flat reflection and transmission bands. Our polarizers provide almost complete transmission and reflection, resulting in high contrast images and good signal to noise ratios. They feature a UV grade fused silica, JGS1, or JGS2 substrate, and have a higher damage threshold than plastic polarizers. Our coatings meet MIL-STD-810F and MIL-C-484971 requirements, and we offer various options. Product-specific web page |
 Precision Optics & Coatings for High Energy Laser Applications Perkins Precision Developments4110 North Valley Drive Longmont, CO 80504 United States |  Perkins Precision Developments (PPD) manufactures Brewster’s angle polarizers as well as 45 degree plate polarizers for high performance with easy alignment. Because we utilize Ion Beam Sputtering (IBS) coating technology, our dielectric thin film plate polarizers are environmentally stable, thus there is no spectral shift caused by either time, moisture or temperature. The predictability and repeatability of IBS thin film coatings allow us to guarantee high transmission at a specific angle of incidence, eliminating the need to angle tune the optical component in order to achieve optimal performance. As with all of our custom laser optics and polarizers, PPD's IBS coated polarizing beam splitters exhibit low absorption, high extinction (Tp/Ts) and high damage thresholds, making them ideal for use with high energy Nd:YAG and fibers lasers as well as other high-power pulsed and CW laser systems throughout the visible and near-infrared. Product-specific web page |
 The Future Depends on Optics Edmund Optics101 East Gloucester Pike Barrington, NJ 08007 United States See us at OPIE 25 in Pacifico Yokohama, Japan, April 23–25 (booth F-32), SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing in Orlando (FL), USA, April 13–17 (booth 917), CLEO 25 in Long Beach (CA), USA, May 4–9 (booth 317), Automate 25 in Detroit (MI), USA, May 12–15 (booth 4400), SPS Italia in Parma, Italy, May 13–15 (hall 5, booth 055) and LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth B1.416)! |  Edmund Optics offers a wide range of dichroic, crystalline, and wire grid polarizers which can also be used for polarization beam combining. Product-specific web page |
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