Fabrication of refractive freeform array masters for artificial compound eye cameras

Abstract

There is a huge demand on miniaturized cameras in the field of mobile consumer electronics. These cameras are currently based on miniaturized single aperture optics. In order to further decrease the thickness of miniaturized camera systems, a multichannel imaging principle needs to be used. These artificial compound eye cameras permit a further decrease in thickness by a factor of two in comparison to miniaturized single aperture optics with same resolution and pixel size. Their fabrication process is currently based on the reflow of photoresist. Due to physical limitations of this technique, only spherical and ellipsoidal surface profiles of the single lenslets are achievable. Consequently, the potential for correcting optical aberrations is restricted leading to limited image quality and resolution. This can be improved significantly by the use of refractive freeform arrays. Due to the non-symmetrical and aspherical surface shapes of the single lenslets, the fabrication by the reflow of photoresist is no longer possible. Therefore, we propose an approach for the fabrication of these structures based on the combination of an ultra-precision machining process together with a microimprinting approach.