Hybrid polymers are a class of materials especially suited for micro-optical applications due to their outstanding transmission and excellent stability towards temperature, chemicals and radiation. They are solvent-free viscous liquid and therefore UV-replication has become the most established process for their usage in micro-optics manufacture. However, they have also comparable processing behavior to classical photoresists and can be processed in versatile ways offering further possibilities for 2D and 3D structuring. Herein, we report on different UV-lithographical technologies to create high-aspect and high resolution pattern with hybrid polymers.
We propose a novel approach of combined patterning technologies to manufacture individualized micro-optical components as required for the integration of system-level optical packaging, e.g. for coupling light into on-chip level waveguides. The presented work consists of an innovative combination of inkjet printing of available optical polymers onto a prepatterned substrate and UV-replication which enables the manufacturing processes for tailor-made polymeric hybrid and biconvex micro-optical components. For this, inkjet printing of the optical polymers InkOrmo or InkEpo is used as a dispensing technique for additive manufacturing. The ink is printed into designated cavities on a patterned substrate that shows either diffractive or refractive features. After UV-induced polymerization, the cured component is separated from the soft mold substrate. This results in a combination of either a diffractive and a refractive element or two convex refractive elements in one monolithic component. The refractive part on top is self-organized by the surface energy and the shape is adjusted with the amount of dispensed ink enabling to tune the refractive power of the lens. The diffractive structure or convex shape on the opposite side of the lens is obtained by replicating the shape of the prepatterned substrate. Such advanced micro-optic components allow in principle a higher degree of system integration and thus further system miniaturization by e.g. substituting a multi lens system with a single hybrid lens. This novel manufacturing concept is composed to cost-effectively implement design requirements, making tailor-made diffractive-refractive lenses easily accessible e.g. to the MEMS/MOEMS community.
We present a new technology which enables the local resolution production of polymer-based micro-optical components, e.g. in photonic 3D packaging systems. The main advantage of this innovative technology is the capability to dispense liquids of a wide viscosity range (200 – 10.000 mPa*s) on a picoliter scale enabling the use of solvent-free liquid polymers. The newly engineered picoliter dispensing system features the possibility to place liquids on substrates with high positioning accuracy and high flexibility of volume variation and shape. The placement of active and passive micro-optical components for photonic packaging plays an important role in improving optical interfaces, especially in data and telecom applications and optical sensor technology. In this work the capability of this picoliter dispensing system is exemplarily demonstrated on single detached microlenses as well as microlens arrays (MLA) using solvent-free, viscous UV curable hybrid polymers OrmoComp® and OrmoClear®FX. The preliminary results of optical characterisations of the fabricated components verify the advantage of this novel technology over competitive manufacturing methods such as inkjet printing in terms of printability of solvent-free polymers since a comparable optical performance can be obtained while saving solvent evaporation steps.
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