Precision glass molding (PGM) is an efficient process used for manufacturing high-precision micro lenses with aspheric surfaces, which are key components in high-resolution systems, such as endoscopes. In PGM, production costs are significantly influenced by the lifetimes of elaborately manufactured molding tools. Protective coatings are applied to the molding tools to withstand severe cyclic thermochemical and thermomechanical loads in the PGM process and, in this way, extend the life of the molding tools. This research focuses on a new method which combines metallographic analysis and finite element method (FEM) simulation to study the interaction of three protective coatings—diamond-like carbon (DLC), PtIr and CrAlN—each in contact with the high Abbe number glass material S-FPM3 in a precision glass molding process. Molding tools are analyzed metallographically using light microscopy, white light interferometry, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The results show that the DLC coating improved process durability more than the PtIr and CrAlN coatings, in which the phenomenon of coating delamination and glass adhesion can be observed. To identify potential explanations for the metrological results, FEM is applied to inspect the stress state and stress distribution in the molding tools during the molding process.

Due to their unique properties, vortex lasers have high application value in frontier fields such as optical micromanipulation, super-resolution imaging, quantum entanglement, and optical communication. In this study, we demonstrated a 946/1030 nm Laguerre-Gaussian (LG₀₁) mode dual-wavelength vortex laser by using an intracavity cascade pumped structure and a spot-defect output mirror. Using a coaxial linear cavity structure, the 808 nm laser diode (LD) was used to end-pump the Nd:YAG crystal to generate a 946 nm laser and then use it to directly pump the Yb:YAG crystal in the cavity to generate a 1030 nm laser, and finally a 946/1030 nm dual-wavelength laser came out. By making a spot defect in the center of the output mirror to suppress the oscillation of the fundamental Gaussian mode laser and carefully adjusting the position of the laser crystals, the LG₀₁ mode dual-wavelength vortex laser was output in single handedness. When the pump power was 40 W, the total output was 664 mW (356 and 308 mW at 946 and 1030 nm LG₀₁ mode vortex lasers), and the total optical-optical conversion efficiency was 1.7%; the output power fluctuations of 946 and 1030 nm LG₀₁ mode vortex lasers within 1 h were 3.43% and 3.13%, respectively; the beam quality factors M² of 946 and 1030 nm LG₀₁ mode vortex lasers were 2.35 and 2.40, respectively. It was proved that the generated dual-wavelength vortex laser had the wavefront phase $\exp \left(\mathrm{i}\mathsf{\varphi }\right)$ by the self-interference method.