Fabrication of liquid-filled square lens array with hemispherical partition walls

Abstract

Liquid-filled square lens array has been developed for an alternative to solid lens array because of its advantage in variable focus length. In addition, the square lens array has advantage with high fill factor compared to liquid circular lens array which is another alternative. However, one of the main limitations of conventional square lens array is the distortion. In this paper, distortion-free liquid square lens array is proposed. The partition walls of the proposed square lens array is fabricated into hemispherical shape to reduce the distortion, and then additional vertical walls are set up on the hemispherical structures to unify the height of partition walls and divide chamber sections. UV lithography techniques are used to fabricate this structure, and diffuser which has an angle of 80 degrees is used in the process. Photoresist is exposed to scattered ultraviolet rays which pass through the diffuser, and hemispherical lens-shaped structures of photoresist remains after development process. Supplementary vertical partition walls are obtained by additional photoresist patterning process on the structure. In this structure, the interface between oil and water comes into contact with the surface of the hemispherical walls, and the refractive index of oil and the walls are equally matched to maximize the part which acts as lens in the chamber. The proposed liquid square lens array can provide us with aberration-free 3D images with high fill factor.