3D process simulation for precision glass molding of freeform and wafer optics

In recent years, glass optics with freeform surface are often adopted in the design of complicated optical systems, such as satellite optical systems and UV optical systems; and wafer scaled lens arrays are widely applied for the mass production of commercial optical components, such as mobile phone camera lenses and HDTV displays. The precision glass molding process is an ideal manufacturing process for the replicative production of such complicated optic lenses. In this work, two case studies with respect to the molding of the above mentioned two challenging optic lenses are introduced separately to demonstrate the capabilities of using 3D FE process simulation method to predict the form error and the refractive index-drop of the freeform optic lenses, as well as the global pitch error and the local form error of each single lens cell on a wafer scaled lens array.