Polystyrene (PS) has not been much used as an optical material due to the considerably high birefringence of PS. For the extensive use of PS in the imaging-lens systems, lower birefringence should be attained for the enhancement of the resolution. Previously, we have developed PS with extremely low birefringence (LB-PS) even when the molecular chain orientation of PS occurred. It indicates that PS may now become an effective material with excellent properties for optical lenses. In this paper, we compared the birefringence of our developed LB-PS with ones of commercial optical polymers that are most commonly utilized in imaging-lens systems. It was confirmed that the birefringence of LB-PS was comparable or even better than that of the commercial ones with high resolution. By designing an imaging-lens system, it was also confirmed that employing PS with the Abbe number of 31.5 could be highly effective in compensating for chromatic aberration as well as obtaining high optical resolution. Moreover, the resolution performance of several lens systems was calculated, analyzed, and compared by considering the birefringence of cyclo-olefin polymer (COP), normal PS, and LB-PS. It was found that LB-PS could maintain high resolution, while normal PS with high birefringence exhibited significant decrease in resolution. It was also found that LB-PS generated higher resolution than COP. All these results revealed that LB-PS could be an excellent optical material to compensate for the chromatic aberration of lens systems, leading to the enhancement of the actual resolution performance. It was, therefore, expected that LB-PS could contribute to improving the resolution performance of smartphone cameras and security cameras.

由于聚苯乙烯（PS）的双折射相当高，因此其作为光学材料的应用不多。为了在成像透镜系统中广泛使用PS，需要获得较低的双折射以提高分辨率。此前，我们开发了即使PS发生分子链取向也具有极低双折射的PS（LB-PS）。这表明PS现在可能成为一种具有优异性能的光学镜片的有效材料。在本文中，我们将我们开发的 LB-PS 的双折射与成像透镜系统中最常用的商用光学聚合物的双折射进行了比较。经证实，LB-PS的双折射与高分辨率的商用双折射相当甚至更好。通过设计成像镜头系统，还证实采用阿贝数为31.5的PS可以非常有效地补偿色差并获得高光学分辨率。此外，考虑环烯烃聚合物（COP）、普通PS和LB-PS的双折射，计算、分析和比较了几种透镜系统的分辨率性能。结果发现，LB-PS 可以保持高分辨率，而具有高双折射的普通 PS 则分辨率显着下降。还发现 LB-PS 产生的分辨率比 COP 更高。所有这些结果表明，LB-PS可能是一种优秀的光学材料，可以补偿镜头系统的色差，从而提高实际分辨率性能。因此，LB-PS 有望有助于提高智能手机摄像头和安全摄像头的分辨率性能。