Fabrication of a curved microlens array using double gray-scale digital maskless lithography

Abstract

Digital maskless lithography is considered to be a high-efficiency and low-cost approach for the fabrication of microstructures, but is limited by the gray scale capability of spatial light modulators. In this work, a novel method of double gray-scale digital maskless lithography is presented for forming a curved microlens array. The target exposure dose profile of the curved microlens array is first split into two individual 3D energy profiles, and then each 3D energy profile can be respectively realized by a single gray-scale digital lithography. Two gray-scale digital masks obtained by projection calculation are superposed on the substrate so as to realize the exposure dose profile of the curved microlens array. Thus, the effective steps that are achieved through the photoresist response to the modulated UV exposure are doubled, so a smoother profile with a steep gradient can be formed by the precise modulation of double gray-scale masks. As a result of the double gray-scale method, a curved microlens array with 183 micro lenslets on a 1024 µm × 768 µm spherical surface has been successfully fabricated.