Adhesive bonding of microoptical components

Hybrid microsystems are composed of various micro-components which even may have been manufactured by diverse techniques. In contrast to monolithically manufactured microsystems assembly plays a major role in their production. At the present time, most of the microsystems are assembled manually. This is definitely not the way to achieve high production outputs at competitive costs. Hence, automatic assembly processes must be developed. Currently in micro-optics there are attempts to remedy this through transferring the know-how from the manufacture of great repeater lenses into the micro-optical technology. Additional there are necessary new methods for handling and exact positioning of the microoptical components. The discussed assembly equipment consists in a robotic system, some special developed grippers and a dosage device for adhesives. Several basis functions to be realized with the micro-optical components for example the collimation of the light by source-incoupling of the lig ht in a fibre or the collimation and beam forming of laser light. Many difficulties come into hybrid assembling because of the small size of the various elements, the sensitivity to damage by handling, bonding and welding and the small range of tolerances for the positioning on the order of 0.1 - 2 microns or with angles of about one arcsec. The prototype is a microoptical subassembly consist of beam forming elements. The assembly consists of a GRIN- and a SELFOC-microlens fixed in a mount. The assembly job is to join automatically these two lenses to each other and in a define distance to the laser diode with a accuracy smaller than 2mu m. At the end of the process the components are to be placed in a housing by welding or adhesive bonding.