Refractive Optics

One area of focus in microoptic technology at Fraunhofer IOF is the lithographic generation of microlens arrays or other optical microstructures.

Lithographic technologies enable the laterally highly precise, parallel generation of a large number of diffraction-limited microoptical elements on wafer scale. These can be used directly (rapid prototyping), but are usually employed as masters for subsequent molding processes or transferred to substrate materials such as glass or silicon with dry etching.

In addition to regular lens arrays, it possible to set the size and orientation/ arrangement of microlenses on a wafer and the associated radius of curvature individually and independently with corresponding CAD data.

• This enables, for example,Application-specific microoptics (focal distance, numerical aperture,…)
• Gradual change over the array (“chirp”),
• Arrays with “statistically” distributed parameters.