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2005
Conference Paper
Titel
Design and fabrication of a chirped array of refractive ellipsoidal micro-lenses for an apposition eye camera objective
Abstract
Apposition compound eye camera objectives are one approach for a vast reduction of the optical system length of an imaging optical sensor. Despite imaging the complete field of view through one aperture like in classical lenses, these objectives split the overall field of view in separated channels which are located adjoined like in insect eyes. Due to the splitting each channel can be optimized for reduction of aberrations occuring under oblique incidence. A correction for astigmatism, field curvature and distortion occurring under oblique incidence can be accomplished by the use of anamorphic micro-lenses leading to an improved resolution of the camera objective. In contrast to regular arrays of equally shaped and equidistant positioned micro-lenses the parameters of the lenses like radii of curvature, center position and angular orientation are functions of the position within the array. These functions can be derived analytically leading to a complete description of the array parameters. We present design considerations for a chirped array containing 130x130 individually shaped ellipsoidal micro-lenses. Melting of photo-resist is employed as fabrication technology for achieving diffraction limited performance. Detailed considerations for the semi-automated layout generation of the photo lithographical masks as well as characterization data of first realized prototypes of the array are given.