Direct fabrication of compound-eye microlens array on curved surfaces by a facile femtosecond laser enhanced wet etching process

We report a direct fabrication of an omnidirectional negative microlens array on a curved substrate by a femtosecond laser enhanced chemical etching process, which is utilized as a molding template for duplicating bioinspired compound eyes. The femtosecond laser treatment of the curved glass substrate employs a common x-y-z stage without rotating the sample surface perpendicular to the laser beam, and uniform, omnidirectional-aligned negative microlenses are generated after a hydrofluoric acid etching. Using the negative microlens array on the concave glass substrate as a molding template, we fabricate an artificial compound eye with 3000 positive microlenses of 95-μm diameter close-packed on a 5-mm polymer hemisphere. Compared to the transferring process, the negative microlenses directly fabricated on the curved mold by our method are distortion-free, and the duplicated artificial eye presents clear and uniform imaging capabilities. This work provides a facile and efficient route to the fabrication of microlenses on any curved substrates without complicated alignment and motion control processes, which has the potential for the development of new microlens-based devices and systems.