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Fabrication of high fill-factor aspheric microlens array by dose-modulated lithography and low temperature thermal reflow

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Abstract

A cost-effective fabrication method for high quality and high fill-factor aspheric microlens arrays (MLAs) is developed. In this method, the complex shape of aspheric microlens is pre-modeled via dose modulation in a digital micromirror device (DMD) based maskless projection lithography system. Digital masks for several bottom layers are replaced from circle to hexagon for the purpose of enhancing the fill-factor of MLAs, then a low temperature thermal reflow process is conducted, after which the average surface roughness of microlens is improved to ~ 0.427 nm while the pre-modeled profile keeps unchanged. Experimental results show that the fabricated aspheric MLAs have almost 100% fill-factor, high shape accuracy and high surface quality. The presented method may provide a promising approach for rapidly fabricating high quality and high fill-factor aspheric microlens in a simple and low-cost way.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51475442), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and partially carried out at the University of Science and Technology of China Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, People’s Republic of China

    Junjie Zhu, Mujun Li & Jinfeng Qiu

  2. Engineering Practice Center, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, People’s Republic of China

    Huichun Ye

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  1. Junjie Zhu
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  2. Mujun Li
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  3. Jinfeng Qiu
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  4. Huichun Ye
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Correspondence to Mujun Li.

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Zhu, J., Li, M., Qiu, J. et al. Fabrication of high fill-factor aspheric microlens array by dose-modulated lithography and low temperature thermal reflow. Microsyst Technol 25, 1235–1241 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-4226-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-4226-2

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