<title>Microlens arrays fabricated by deep lithography with protons and their characterization</title>

Abstract

In this paper we present our latest results on the fabrication and characterization of plastic microlenslet arrays using Deep Lithography with Protons (DLP) and highlight their geometrical dimensions, their surface profile and their uniformity. We also present quantitative information on their optical characteristics such as focal length and spherical aberration as measured with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Furthermore we demonstrate the flexibility of the DLP technology to fabricate arrays of microlenses that feature different pitches and different sags. Although the DLP technology is a valuable tool to rapidly prototype refractive micro-optical components, the approach is unpractical for mass-fabrication. We therefore introduce a replication technique, called vacuum casting, which is very appropriate when only a few tens of copies have to be made, and we bring forward the first quantitative characteristics of these microlens replicas.