News | Jan 09, 2026

First Lens Bonding

The key to brilliant smartphone photos: Our contribution to first lens bonding is essential for best image results.

DELO products used in first lens bonding ensure that smartphone cameras produce razor-sharp images. With the trend towards larger sensors, more powerful lenses, and increasingly complex multi-camera systems, manufacturing requirements are also increasing. Precise bonding of lens components is crucial for image quality. Innovative adhesive solutions from DELO enable maximum accuracy, stability, and reliability—even with the small structures found in modern smartphone optics.

First Lens Bonding

The trend toward triple cameras

Multi-lens systems for high-resolution smartphone photos

Smartphone cameras have made enormous technological advances in recent years. While early models usually only had a single lens, current devices rely on complex multi-lens systems—with dual, triple, or even quad cameras. This combination of several precisely coordinated lenses enables wide-angle, telephoto, and macro shots in nearly professional quality. The intelligent combination of lens types provides great flexibility in subject selection, enables variable zoom capability, and delivers a natural image depth. In addition to high-quality optics, software integration also plays a key role today. AI-assisted image processing, intelligent sensor control, and software-based depth-of-field calculations combine multiple partial images into a high-quality result that comes close to that of traditional cameras. At the same time, the images are automatically optimized—depending on the lighting conditions, subject distance, or movement—so that excellent results can be achieved even under difficult conditions.

Key factors in manufacturing

High-end smartphone cameras require maximum precision

The selection of suitable lens types (e.g. aspherical lenses) and lens shapes (e.g. plano-convex) is crucial for achieving high image quality within the compact design of a smartphone camera.

To ensure the highest image quality, the production of modern, compact camera optics requires maximum manufacturing precision and the tightest tolerances — this is the only way to avoid subsequent aberrations, distortions, and color errors. Precise joining of the components — for example through processes such as First Lens Bonding — ensures that the optical performance is maintained. In this context, the stability of the bond provided by high-tech adhesives plays a central role.

Infobox

Typical optical aberrations that can occur from minimal deviations:

Chromatic aberration (color fringing)

Chromatic aberration occurs because light of different wavelengths (colors) is refracted by a lens to varying degrees. This causes color fringes — often red-violet or green-yellow — to appear along high-contrast edges.

Spherical aberration (blur)

Spherical aberration occurs when light rays passing through the outer areas of a lens are refracted more strongly than those passing through the lens center. As a result, the peripheral rays do not converge exactly at the same focal point as the central rays. The outcome is an unfocused or slightly blurred image because the light is not brought to a single focal point.

Field curvature

Instead of projecting an image onto a flat plane, the lens focuses it onto a slightly curved surface — similar to the shape of a bowl. As a result, a flat camera sensor or display cannot render all areas of the image in sharp focus at the same time: when the center appears sharp, the edges become blurred (or vice versa).

The image shows an example for chromatic aberration with a raven sitting on a tree before a lightgrey sky

Example: Chromatic aberration appears here as reddish-violet color fringes at high-contrast transitions — such as between the bright sky and the dark branches and ravens.

Lens types

To achieve high-quality imaging results, it is important to know the different lens types and consider their influence on the image outcome:

The 3D illustration shows the lens bonding process of a smartphone camera. It depicts how the camera lens and housing are connected using adhesive. The adhesive is colored pink for illustration purposes, while the lenses are shown in turquoise.

Spherical Lens

Evenly curved surface
Standard lens shape, cost-effective and easy to manufacture

Achromatic Lens

Combines two materials with different refractive indices
Corrects chromatic aberration and improves image brightness and clarity

Aspherical Lens

Complex, uneven (non-spherical) curvature
Corrects spherical aberrations, allows for thinner and more powerful camera modules

Aplanatic Lens

Special curvature for error correction
Minimizes spherical aberration and field curvature, ensuring high image sharpness

$Comparison between spherical and aspherical lens: image shows light refraction and focusing with different lens types for optical applications$

Comparison between spherical and aspherical lens: The illustration shows how the two lens types affect light refraction and focusing.

Lens Shapes

In addition to the type, the shape of the lens is also crucial for high-quality results. Depending on its shape, the lens can perform different tasks.

Biconvex

Convex on both sides
Converges light, commonly used for focusing applications

Plano-convex

One side flat, one convex
Focuses parallel light rays, standard design for camera lenses

Concave-convex (negative meniscus)

Inner surface less curved than the outer surface
Corrects optical aberrations, used for diverging light paths

Meniscus (positive)

Both sides similarly curved
Reduces aberrations, widely used in multi-lens optical systems

Biconcave

Concave on both sides
Diverging lens, used for beam expansion or compensation

Plano-concave

One side flat, one concave
Diverges light, assists in beam widening or error correction

Convex-concave

One side convex, one concave (inner side more curved)
Allows precise image field adjustment and minimizes distortion, often combined with aspherical elements

The illustration shows the different lens shapes for optical modules

Adhesives for Smartphone Cameras

Why they're essential in manufacturing

In First Lens Bonding, the first lens of a camera module is precisely positioned and bonded to the remaining lenses and other camera components using a specialized adhesive. This highly accurate joining process is crucial for ensuring correct optical alignment and for connecting different materials — such as glass, plastic, or metal — without internal stress.

The adhesives used fulfill a dual function. On one hand, they securely fix the delicate lens elements with high mechanical stability. On the other, they compensate for temperature-related stresses between different material combinations or module sizes. This prevents lenses from shifting positions under temperature fluctuations and ensures consistent image quality. In modern multi-lens systems — such as triple-camera setups — First Lens Bonding is therefore one of the key processes for achieving both high performance and long-term durability.

DELO solutions at a glance

DELO presents two innovative adhesives for First Lens Bonding. DELO DUALBOND SJ4758 and DELO PHOTOBOND FB4176 are characterized by excellent adhesion even with very narrow joint gaps and stress- compensating properties.

DELO DUALBOND SJ4758 combines fast light curing with a subsequent heat curing process—ideal for opaque areas or shadow zones.
DELO PHOTOBOND FB4176 enables light curing within just one to five seconds and offers a particularly dry surface compared to other acrylate adhesives.

Both variants are suitable for both passive and active alignment technologies and achieve adhesion values of up to 30 MPa, in some cases even with low-stress, low-temperature curing from 60°C. Thanks to their reproducible shrinkage behavior, the adhesives adhere optimally to materials typical of camera modules, such as PC (polycarbonate) and LCP (liquid crystal polymer).