To collimate effectively the beam emitted from the stacked laser diode in which the lasing surfaces of the diode bars are not located in a plane, a new type of fast-axis collimator, refractive cylindrical microlens array with tunable focal lengths, is presented in this paper. Each lens of the array has the same diameter of 300μm but different focal lengths, ranged from 430μm to 540μm. By means of the mask moving lithography and replication technology, the microlens array was successfully fabricated. The measured fast-axis divergence of the stacked laser diode beam after the collimator was 25mrad, about half of the one (40mrad) for the microlens array with common focal lengths of 400μm.
In order to form the proper aspherical microlens array profile with larger NA on photosensitive materials, a method is developed based on the characteristics of resist and processing parameters during development, for designing the exposure distribution, an experience formula has been proposed in the paper. Using the moving mask method, the exposure energy distribution function related to the photolithographic mask function can be determined by the experience formula. The profile control procedure is formed especially for the deeper relief profiles, after the binary mask data are slightly modified, the micro-structure with aspherical lens profile can be fabricated on the selected thicker resist, the micro relief profile error can be controlled in a certain range. The micro-profile is farther transferred to fused silica by ICP etching system. By our method, the fast microlens array elements with good fidelity and reasonable roughness have been fabricated and applied to the laser diode collimating system.
A conclusion that a single conventional optical system could not realize fiber coupled high-power laser diode array is drawn based on the BPP of laser beam. According to the parameters of coupled fiber, a method to couple LDA beams into a single multi-mode fiber including beams collimating, shaping, focusing and coupling is present. The divergence angles after collimating are calculated and analyzed; the shape equation of the collimating micro-lenses array is deprived. The focusing lens is designed. A fiber coupled LDA result with the core diameter of 800 um and numeric aperture of 0.37 is gotten.
A new method for microlens profile design was developed based on the analysis to the main parameters of microlens array, including micro profile formation, the numerical aperture ( NA ), the maximum sag depth for the refractive lens and the minimum zones width for the diffractive lens. With the relationships among the parameters, the microlens array in different profile can be determined effectively. The moving mask method[1] is used to realize the required profiles, an unique photolithography system have been built for implementing the mask moving exposure in both X and Y directions for the creation of microlens array. By modifying the binary moving mask, optimizing the photosensitive materials and the processing technique, the microlens profile error can be controlled in the range of 0.4µm~3µm depending on effective reliefdepth of the microlens. In our method, both diffractive and refractive microlens array with larger NA and higher fill factor can be fabricated for satisfying a plenty of purposes.
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