Abstract
This work presents a technique for fabricating biconvex polymer microlenses using microfluidics, and then evaluates their tunable optical properties. A glass microfluidic channel was employed to rapidly mass-produce nanoliter-sized biphasic Janus droplets, which consist of a biconvex segment of a photocurable monomer and a concave-convex segment of a non-curable silicone oil that contained a surfactant. Subsequent photopolymerization produces polymeric biconvex spherical microlenses with templated dual curvatures. By changing the flow-rate ratios of the photocurable and non-curable droplet phases in the microfluidic channel, the radii of curvature of the two lens surfaces and the thicknesses of the resultant microlenses can be varied. The resulting biconvex microlenses with different shapes were used in image projection experiments. Different magnification properties were observed, and were consistent with the properties estimated quantitatively from the geometrical parameters of the lenses.
Highlights
Microlenses and microlens arrays are important components in photonics and optoelectronics, and are used in numerous applications—for example, in imaging systems, fiber-optic communication networks, and optical medical devices
This work presents a technique for fabricating biconvex polymer microlenses using microfluidics, and evaluates their tunable optical properties
A glass microfluidic channel was employed to rapidly mass-produce nanoliter-sized biphasic Janus droplets, which consist of a biconvex segment of a photocurable monomer and a concave-convex segment of a non-curable silicone oil that contained a surfactant
Summary
Microlenses and microlens arrays are important components in photonics and optoelectronics, and are used in numerous applications—for example, in imaging systems, fiber-optic communication networks, and optical medical devices. Concerning moldless techniques, grayscale photolithography [1], thermal reflow [2], laser micromachining [3,4,5], inkjet printing [6], microcontact printing [7], and self-assembly [8,9] have been proposed to fabricate various polymeric, glass, silicon, and ceramic microlens arrays Many of these methods require sophisticated machinery, such as photo- or electron-beam lithography systems and lasers, greatly limiting the high-throughput and low-cost aspects of the production of such microlenses. We performed projection experiments to observe how varying the shape of the lens affects its magnification properties
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