Fast fabrication of curved microlens array using DMD-based lithography

Curved microlens array is the core element of the biologically inspired artificial compound eye. Many existing fabrication processes remain expensive and complicated, which limits a broad range of application of the artificial compound eye. In this paper, we report a fast fabrication method for curved microlens array by using DMD-based maskless lithography. When a three-dimensional (3D) target curved profile is projected into a two-dimensional (2D) mask, arbitrary curved microlens array can be flexibly and efficiently obtained by utilizing DMD-based lithography. In order to verify the feasibility of this method, a curved PDMS microlens array with 90 micro lenslets has been fabricated. The physical and optical characteristics of the fabricated microlens array suggest that this method is potentially suitable for applications in artificial compound eye.