Fabrication of polymer micro-lens array with pneumatically diaphragm-driven drop-on-demand inkjet technology

Abstract

The paper reports an effective method to fabricate micro-lens arrays with the ultraviolet-curable polymer, using an original pneumatically diaphragm-driven drop-on-demand inkjet system. An array of plano convex micro-lenses can be formed on the glass substrate due to surface tension and hydrophobic effect. The micro-lens arrays have uniform focusing function, smooth and real planar surface. The fabrication process showed good repeatability as well, fifty micro-lenses randomly selected form 9 × 9 miro-lens array with an average diameter of 333.28μm showed 1.1% variations. Also, the focal length, the surface roughness and optical property of the fabricated micro-lenses are measured, analyzed and proved satisfactory. The technique shows great potential for fabricating polymer micro-lens arrays with high flexibility, simple technological process and low production cost.

Micro-lens Array Fabrication by Two Photon Polymerization Technology

“…According to the optical theory of spherical lenses [10,11], the relation between the focal length f, the spherical radius R, and the refraction rate of the lens material n can be expressed as Photomer 3015 was used as the TPP resin, with a refraction rate n of 1.541. The lens thickness t is independent of the focal length f. However, the length thickness determines the size D of the lens and is an important parameter for designing MLAs.…”

Fabrication of Hole-Patterned Self-Standing Curved Film Using Large-area Spherical Soft UV Imprint Lithography

“…[5][6][7] Conventionally, the fabrication processes for these devices have been developed for planar bulk substrates. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Recently, patterning methods for self-standing curved films have attracted considerable attention because of their potential to be applied for human body implantable devices and flexible devices as well as optical devices. [10][11][12][13][14] Thus, to realize these devices, patterning methods for self-standing cur ved films are required.…”

Dimensionally controlled complex 3D sub-micron pattern fabrication by single step dual diffuser lithography (DDL)

“…Various kinds of microfabrication processes were developed and studied by the researchers over the decades including surface micromachining [2], bulk micromachining [3], and LIGA process [4] until recently, when three-dimensional (3D) microstructures like microlenses, micro/nanotips, microtrapezoids have been focused in various microsystems such as microfluidics, micro optics, electronic and mechanical devices [5][6][7][8] for which these processes have been considered inadequate. New processes were introduced in order to fabricate such complex 3D microstructures including deep reactive ion etching [9], inclined UV lithography [10], thermal reflow [11,12], focused ion beam [13,14], UV proximity printing [15,16], UV microstamping [17] and so on [18,19]. However, these 3D microfabrication processes revealed various kinds of limitations and disadvantages such as most of them require special equipments, process is costly, have low throughput and above all most of the processes are limited to specific pattern fabrication.…”