Two-dimensional plastic microlens arrays by deep lithography with protons: fabrication and characterization

Ottevaere, Heidi; Volckaerts, Bart; Lamprecht, Juergen; Schwider, Johannes; Hermanne, Alex; Veretennicoff, Irina; Thienpont, Hugo

doi:10.1088/1464-4258/4/4/354

Cited by 52 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…This will result in micro-spherical or micro-cylindrical lens surfaces. 17 Both processes can be applied to the same sample after a single irradiation session as the dose required for the etching or swelling is very different. The basic process steps of DPW are illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: Rapid Prototyping By Means Of Deep Proton Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-centering fiber alignment structures for high-precision field installable single-mode fiber connectors

et al. 2014

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There is a steady increase in the demand for internet bandwidth, primarily driven by cloud services and highdefinition video streaming. Europe's Digital Agenda states the ambitious objective that by 2020 all Europeans should have access to internet at speeds of 30M b/s or above, with 50% or more of households subscribing to connections of 100M b/s. Today however, internet access in Europe is mainly based on the first generation of broadband, meaning internet accessed over legacy telephone copper and TV cable networks. In recent years, Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) networks have been adopted as a replacement of traditional electrical connections for the 'last mile' transmission of information at bandwidths over 1Gb/s. However, FTTH penetration is still very low (< 5%) in most major Western economies. The main reason for this is the high deployment cost of FTTH networks. Indeed, the success and adoption of optical access networks critically depend on the quality and reliability of connections between optical fibers. In particular a further reduction of insertion loss of fieldinstallable connectors must be achieved without a significant increase in component cost. This requires precise alignment of fibers that can differ in terms of ellipticity, eccentricity or diameter and seems hardly achievable using today's widespread ferrule-based alignment systems.In this paper, we present a field-installable connector based on deflectable/compressible spring structures, providing a self-centering functionality for the fiber. This way, it can accommodate for possible fiber cladding diameter variations (the tolerance on the cladding diameter of G.652 fiber is typically ±0.7µm). The mechanical properties of the cantilever are derived through an analytical approximation and a mathematical model of the spring constant, and finite element-based simulations are carried out to find the maximum first principal stress as well as the stress distribution distribution in the fiber alignment structure. Elastic constants of the order of 10 4 N/m are found to be compatible with a proof stress of 70 M P a. We show the successful prototyping of 3-spring fiber alignment structures using deep proton writing and investigate their compatibility with replication techniques such as hot embossing and injection moulding. Fiber insertion in our self-centering alignment structures is achieved by means of a dedicated interferometric setup allowing assessment of the fiber facet quality, of the fiber's position in relation to the connector's front and of the spring deformation during fiber insertion. These self-centering structures have the potential to become the basic building blocks for a new generation of field-installable connectors, ultimately breaking the current paradigm of ferrule-based connectivity requiring extensive pre-engineering and highly specialized manpower for field deployment.

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Section: Rapid Prototyping By Means Of Deep Proton Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-centering fiber alignment structures for high-precision field installable single-mode fiber connectors

et al. 2014

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“…Indeed, when regions feature a low enough molecular weight they can be receptive to an in-diffusion process of an organic monomer upon which their volume will expand. This way, irradiated regions with a circular footprint will be transformed into hemi-spherically shaped micro-lenses 15 The physics behind this lithographic technique, the details of the technological processing steps, and the compatibility of this prototyping process with mass replication have been published before. 16,17 All optical interconnect components and modules presented in this work are prototyped with this generic micro-optics fabrication technology.…”

Section: Micro-optical Prototyping Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The remaining parameter that controls the shape of the micro-lenses is the dose deposited. The relationship between the focal length of the micro-lenses and the dose has been documented in extenso 15 and results in lenses showing a focal length standard deviation of 0.31 µm with a predominantly Gaussian shape.…”

Section: Technology Constraints Of Dpw Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-cost plastic micro-optics for board level optical interconnections

et al. 2006

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One of the grand challenges in solving the interconnection bottlenecks at the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and Multi-Chip-Module (MCM) level, is to adequately replace the PCB and intra-MCM galvanic interconnects with high-performance, low-cost, compact and reliable micro-photonic alternatives. In our labs at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel we are therefore focusing on the continuous development of a rapid prototyping technology for micro-optical interconnect modules, which we call Deep Proton Writing (DPW).The special feature of this prototyping technology is that it is compatible with commercial low-cost mass replication techniques such as micro injection moulding and hot embossing. We will address more specifically in this paper the following components: 1) out-of-plane couplers for optical wave-guides embedded in PCB, 2) peripheral fiber ribbons and two dimensional single-and multimode fiber connectors for high-speed parallel optical connections, and 3) intra-MCM level optical interconnections via free-space optical modules.We furthermore give special attention to the optical tolerancing and the opto-mechanical integration of the components. We use both a sensitivity analysis to misalignment errors and Monte Carlo simulations. It is our aim to investigate the whole component integration chain from the optoelectronic device to the micro-opto-mechanical components constituting the interconnect module.

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“…At now, microlenses with variable focusing have been obtained by actuation of liquid crystals or other liquids through electro-wetting, electrophoresis or hydrodynamic pressure [1][2][3][4]. On the other hand, a large variety of fabrication processes have been developed for plastic/polymer based microlenses [5,6], such as embossing [7], softlithography [8], micro-molding [9], photolithography [10], electron beam lithography [11] reactive ion etching [12], laser assisted technique [6] and printing techniques [13,14]. In particular, these last techniques were advised as direct methods for high-quality and high-precision processes making the fabrication short time-consuming and cost-effective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Printing on demand of polymer micro lenses array

et al. 2014

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In the recent years many commercial applications such as optoelectronics, photonic and biomedical devices, as well as image processing require the fabrication of adaptive and adjustable micro-lens array. A lot of attempts have been conducted in order to support the growing interest in the production of lens arrays for sensors or optical communications devices for parallel data transmission. Several fabrication techniques and a large variety of process have been proposed for polymer based microlenses and their incorporation into technological devices with a large area of application, but, the preparation of moulds, masks or metal layers with very accurate dimensions and shapes is generally required. Here we present the application of a pyro-electrohydrodynamic (Pyro-EHD)-dispenser for the fabrication of polymer microlens arrays overpassing the viscosity limit of the conventional ink-jet printing systems and working in a nozzle-less modality. The results regarding the fabrication procedure and the characterization of polymer micro-lens arrays of different shapes and heights are examined.

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Two-dimensional plastic microlens arrays by deep lithography with protons: fabrication and characterization

Abstract: In this paper we focus on the fabrication of individual plastic refractive microlenses with Deep Lithography with Protons (DLP). We give a detailed description of the microlens fabrication

Cited by 52 publications

References 10 publications

Self-centering fiber alignment structures for high-precision field installable single-mode fiber connectors

Self-centering fiber alignment structures for high-precision field installable single-mode fiber connectors

Low-cost plastic micro-optics for board level optical interconnections

Printing on demand of polymer micro lenses array

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