Significance: The scanning fiber endoscope (SFE), an ultrasmall optical imaging device with a large field-of-view (FOV) for having a clear forward view into the interior of blood vessels, has great potential in the cardiovascular disease diagnosis and surgery assistance, which is one of the key applications for short-wave infrared biomedical imaging. The state-of-the-art SFE system uses a miniaturized refractive spherical lens doublet for beam projection. A metalens is a promising alternative that can be made much thinner and has fewer off-axis aberrations than its refractive counterpart.Aim: We demonstrate a transmissive metalens working at 1310 nm for a forward viewing endoscope to achieve a shorter device length and better resolution at large field angles.Approach: We optimize the metalens of the SFE system using Zemax, fabricate it using e-beam lithography, characterize its optical performances, and compare them with the simulations. Results:The SFE system has a resolution of ∼140 μm at the center of field (imaging distance 15 mm), an FOV of ∼70 deg, and a depth-of-focus of ∼15 mm, which are comparable with a state-of-the-art refractive lens SFE. The use of the metalens reduces the length of the optical track from 1.2 to 0.86 mm. The resolution of our metalens-based SFE drops by less than a factor of 2 at the edge of the FOV, whereas the refractive lens counterpart has a ∼3 times resolution degradation.Conclusions: These results show the promise of integrating a metalens into an endoscope for device minimization and optical performance improvement.

No abstract

Patterns written by laser direct write have a critical dimension (CD) bias dependence on the dose similar to other direct write methods, such as electron beam lithography, which can be explained by the exposure intensity distribution (EID) of the laser beam. In this study, a comprehensive model based on the EID is proposed to understand the pattern CD bias dependence on the dose, which is known as the exposure latitude. This model was supported by the results of the exposure tests on MicroChem S1800 resist on an Si wafer using the Heidelberg DWL66+ laser writer. The exposure latitudes of the patterns at both micrometer and submicrometer scale were measured. At the micrometer scale, the exposure latitudes were found to have no measurable dependence on the pattern size and the local pattern density. This conclusion does not hold at the submicrometer scale where the length scale is comparable to the width of the laser beam. This study proposes a way to convert the experimental exposure latitude data into the EID functions and fit these functions by assuming a Gaussian laser beam intensity distribution. All empirical observations are found to agree with the predictions made by the EID model. The authors also show that this model can help achieve dimensional accuracy, especially when there is a change in the exposure process. Moreover, it can be used to analyze and minimize the CD inconsistency between different runs found in the experiments. To reduce such inconsistency, overexposing combined with a negative bias applied to the pattern is suggested.