Patternable hybrid sol–gel material cuts the cost of fabrication of microoptical elements for photonics applications

Abstract

A patternable organic–inorganic SiO2/TiO2 hybrid material was synthesized by using the sol–gel method at room temperature, which can be used for the simple and low cost fabrication of microoptical elements for photonics both with and without a development process. The transmittance of this material was characterized with a spectrophotometer in the wavelength range from 200 nm to 1000 nm. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to monitor its photochemical activities. To demonstrate its advantages for fabrication of microoptical elements, a spherical microlens array and a circular cone microlens array were fabricated by using development based and self-development based methods respectively. The latter, self-development based method is a single step fabrication process and only needs a binary mask to control UV light exposure. Thus, this patternable hybrid sol–gel material shows great applicability for the fabrication of microoptical elements and cuts the cost of traditional photolithography fabrication methods.