Chalcogenide Glass IR Artificial Compound Eyes Based on Femtosecond Laser Microfabrication

The compact and lightweight infrared (IR) optics devices are highly demanded in booming applications. However, fabrication of IR optics devices with high efficiency is still technically challenging, especially artificial compound eyes (ACE) with low aberration imaging and large field of view. In this work, a method of femtosecond laser wet etching combining with the “two-step” precision glass molding based on chalcogenide glass is proposed to fabricate glass IR ACE. The as-prepared consists of 6000 ommatidia (diameter of 88 µm and the sag height of 11 µm) arranged in a hexagonal manner with perfect parabolic morphology and high uniformity. The chalcogenide glass IR ACE exhibits excellent optical performance both in IR active imaging and IR passive imaging with high transmittance (60–70%) ranging from 2.5 to 15 µm. The ommatidia have a high resolution up to 20.16 lp mm⁻¹, and imaging with large field of view up to 60° and low aberration can be achieved. Furthermore, the proposed technology shows advantages to fabricate glass IR ACE with low cost and high efficiency, and glass IR ACE shows great potential in IR imaging, robot vision, IR 3D motion tracking, and so on.