Design of the double-telecentric high-aperture diffractive-refractive objectives

The possibility for achieving optical performance of objectives, including a minimum amount of diffractive lenses, comparable to optical performance of multiple-lens conventional objectives for nanolithography, is considered. The problem of chromatism connected with using excimer lasers is solved by applying aspheric substrates that help to reduce both axial color and spherochromatic aberration.     

Rapid manufacturing of plastic aspheric optical lens

This paper presents a new process to rapid manufacture the plastic aspheric optical lens. A bridge tooling was developed for fabricating the mold inserts of an aspheric lens using silicone rubber materials. Epoxy‐based composites were used to fabricate mold inserts of an aspheric optical lens. Z‐axis shrinkage error was investigated after plastic injection molding and compensated to the designed aspheric lens. In comparison with conventional method for fabricating a pair of mold inserts of a new plastic lens, a cost reduction of 75.02% and a time saving of 77.78% can be achieved. The deformation improvement percentage is about 92.48%. This technology can be used to compensate the z‐axis deformation efficiently due to shrinkage error of plastics in molding aspheric lens. Aspheric optical lens can be produced rapidly and cost‐effectively.     

高效非成像聚光光学系统设计与性能分析

针对菲涅尔透镜存在实际光学效率偏低的问题,本文设计了一种由非球面透镜和棒锥镜组成的高效非成像聚光光学系统。在光学设计软件Zemax的序列模式下对非球面透镜进行了优化设计,通过最大程度地减小球差,像面光斑的几何半径从42 mm降到了1.7 mm。基于此,在Zemax的非序列模式下,完成了非球面透镜和棒锥镜的建模和优化,通过蒙特卡罗光线追迹分析实现了光学效率为87%、接收角为0.9°的非成像聚光光学系统。最后,基于非球面透镜阵列和棒锥镜样品,实现了高倍聚光型光伏模组的封装与测试。测试结果表明,该模组的光电转换效率达30.03%,与菲涅尔透镜构成的高倍聚光型光伏模组相比有显著提升。     

Mechanically tunable aspheric lenses via additive manufacture of hanging elastomeric droplets for microscopic applications

Abstract

Mechanically deformable lenses with dynamically tunable focal lengths have been developed in this work. The fabricated five types of aspheric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) lenses presented here have an initial focal length of 7.0, 7.8, 9.0, 10.0 and 10.2 mm. Incorporating two modes of operation in biconvex and concave–convex configurations, the focal lengths can be tuned dynamically as 5.2–10.2, 5.5–9.9, 6.6–11.9, 6.1–13.5 and 6.6–13.5 mm respectively. Additive manufacturing was utilized to fabricate these five types of aspheric lenses (APLs) via sequential layering of PDMS materials. Complex structures with three-dimensional features and shorter focal lengths can be successfully produced by repeatedly depositing, inverting and curing controlled PDMS volume onto previously cured PDMS droplets. From our experiments, we empirically found a direct dependence of the focal length of the lenses with the amount (volume) of deposited PDMS droplets. This new mouldless, low-cost, and flexible lens fabrication method is able to transform an ordinary commercial smartphone camera into a low-cost portable microscope. A few microscopic features can be readily visualized, such as wrinkles of ladybird pupa and printed circuit board. The fabrication technique by successively applying hanging droplet and facile mechanical focal-length-tuning set-up can be easily adopted in the development of high-performance optical lenses.     

Optical surface optimization for the correction of presbyopia

Presbyopia, the gradual loss of accommodation that accompanies aging, can be corrected by creating asphericity in the optical path of the eye. Bifocal and aspheric contact lenses, intraocular lenses, spectacle lenses, and laser refractive surgery are all widely used to alleviate the symptoms of presbyopia. These types of corrective surfaces try to concentrate vision in limited peaks over the full range of vergences. The methodology described in this paper is designed to correct presbyopia by optimizing vision over the entire target range of near to distant. A corrective surface was created by employing an iterative function minimization algorithm to optimize an optical metric. In most cases, it is possible to obtain an optical surface that will optically compensate for presbyopia.     

Partial-Ductile Grinding, Lapping, and Polishing of Aspheric and Spherical Surfaces on Glass

This paper discusses partial-ductile-mode grinding, lapping and polishing of aspheric and spherical surfaces on glass. Industrial manufacture of glass lenses usually involves three operations: grinding (known as milling in the optical industry), tapping, and polishing. The fracture mode of material removal is dominant in the grinding process. While these three operations have been successful for machining spherical lenses, aspheric lenses have been manufactured in the absence of the lapping process, because of the considerable amount of ductile mode of material removal in grinding. The parameters that helped identify and solve problems in manufacturing were surface roughness, micro-fractures and ductile streaks on glass surfaces, and interferometric fringes.     

Spectral properties of multiorder diffractive lenses

Diffractive lenses have been traditionally designed with the first diffracted order. The spectral characteristics of diffractive lenses operating in higher diffracted orders differ significantly from the first-order case. Multiorder diffractive lenses offer a new degree of freedom in the design of broadband and multispectral optical systems that include diffractive optical elements. It is shown that blazing the surface-relief diffractive lens for higher diffraction orders enables the design of achromatic and apochromatic singlets. The wavelength-dependent optical transfer function and the associated Strehl ratio are derived for multiorder diffractive lenses. Experiments that illustrate lens performance in two spectral bands are described, and the results show excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.     

Generalized Raytracing and Applications

The paper deals with an enlargement of the common raytracing algorithm. It allows a simultaneous handling of all rays in an infinitesimal neighbourhood of a given ray. The method can be used for calculating the astigmatic foci of wavefronts and for direct computation of derivatives of transverse ray aberrations and wave aberrations with respect to parameters of the system. The formulae are sufficiently general to handle optical systems without rotational symmetry and with aspheric lenses and mirrors.     

Application of the see-saw method to all refracting optical systems

The optical see-saw diagram is a method that describes image correction to third-order approximation over a finite field of view in rotationally symmetric systems that employ aspheric surfaces. The aim of this paper is to describe the correction of aberrations caused by plane surfaces in all refracting optical systems in terms of the see-saw diagram. A lens correction algorithm based on the see-saw method is described to correct analytically the Seidel aberrations, primary spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism, and distortion, in such systems. We then apply this lens correction algorithm to the design of equivalent configurations by aspherizing different surfaces of the system, and the high-order aberrations of the equivalent configurations are evaluated by means of transverse-ray-aberration plots. Results indicate that this method gives information on what the contribution must be to the third-order aberrations that each component should provide to the system to give a better balance of high-order aberrations. Examples of the lens correction algorithm applied to lenses with six refracting surfaces and working for both finite and infinite object conjugates are given.     

以环形子孔径扫描法测量大口径非球面的研究

总结非球面常用检验方法在应用中优、缺点的基础上,使用环形子孔径扫描法来测量大口径非球面。这种方法使被测元件相对于参考波前的斜率差减小到干涉仪允许的测量范围内,每次测量仅是被测表面的一部分,通过算法实现数据“拼接”,从而得到整个面形信息。该方法无需辅助光学元件即可实现对大口径、大相对口径非球面的直接测量,为大口径高精度非球面的加工检验提供了有效手段。     

Diffractive optical elements with modulated zone sizes

Abstract

The standard design for phase-only diffractive optical elements comprises a transformation of the continuous phase function into a surface relief by means of wrapping the phase into regular intervals of M2π. This results in a structure with diffractive zones aligned in a horizontal plane. We present an alternative design concept with modulated zone sizes leading to non-periodic boundary positions and non-aligned surface structures. The diffractive properties are compared to those of conventional diffractive optical elements. It can be shown that they are fully equivalent for the design wavelength, but exhibit a different spectral behaviour for deviating wavelengths. These properties are exploited for the improvement of the optical performance of blazed gratings and diffractive lenses under conditions of deviating wavelengths. Special emphasis is put on the optimization of the ratio between diffractive efficiencies of the design order and other orders for blazed gratings and focusing diffractive lenses, as well as the suppression of interference effects within Gaussian beams collimated with diffractive lenses.     

Precision molded-glass optics

Results achieved in high-precision molding of glass lenses are reported. The work concentrated on a 0.4- N.A. 8-mm diam lens with spherical surfaces. The glass is a specialty glass composition of index (d-line) 1.604 and Abbe number 50. Typical design tolerances which have been achieved in the molded glass lenses include relative surface figure replication of 0.06 Aim, thickness and diameter tolerances of A+/-10 Am, wedge of <10-3 rad, birefringence of less than one one-hundredth wave, and index homogeneity in the sixth decimal place. These results are directly applicable to molding precision glass aspheric lenses of similar tolerances.     

一种高次光学非球面度的计算方法

针对现有光学非球面度计算方法不统一的问题,在分析常用方法特点的基础上,对于高次光学非球面度的计算提出最小最大残差法。寻找最接近球面,使其沿法线方向与非球面的最大偏离量最小,此时的最大偏离量即为非球面的最大非球面度。该方法适于计算机编程,计算结果准确,且可完全统一二次曲面和高次非球面的非球面度计算。     

Three-shell-based lens barrel for the effective athermalization of an IR optical system

We have developed a new IR optical system that consists of three mirrors and four lenses, and that operates in the temperature range 8°C-32°C. This temperature range can induce thermoelastic deformation in the lenses and their mounting subassembly, leading to a large defocus error associated with the displacement of the lenses inside the barrel. We suggest using a new three-shell-based athermalization structure composed of two materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion (Invar and aluminum). A finite element analysis and the experiment data were used to confirm that this new athermalization barrel had a defocus error sensitivity of 11.6?nm/°C; this is an improvement on the widely used conventional single-shell titanium barrel model, which has a defocus error sensitivity of 29.8?nm/°C. This paper provides the technical details of the new athermalization design, and its computational and experimental performance results.     

Well-corrected Two-element Telescope with a Flat Image

The three element Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope is a well-known catadioptric system that can be corrected for spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism and Petzval curvature. This paper describes a version with the same aberration correction, but with only two elements. There are just three optical surfaces that need to be made, two of which are aspheric. Because of the simplicity of this two-element design, alignment and environmental stability should be better than that of more conventional systems. It is also a very compact system, with a length that is only 45 per cent of the system focal length. Performance numbers for a typical design are given, as well as an explanation of the theory behind this new system.     

Study of the fabrication of infrared-transparent dielectric aspheric deposits by continuous-wave laser deposition

The fabrication of dielectric aspheric deposits with optical refractive functionality by a continuous-wave laser deposition technique is reported for the particular case of an amorphous As-S alloy. The influence of both the laser power and fabrication times in the deposit thickness profile is studied from the measurements performed by a mechanical profilometer. The use of press-powder tablets as starting material have been found to have a significant effect in the deposition efficiency, and indications of a transition from a discrete to a continuous nature of the target, have also been observed. A notable reproducibility has been found both in the material stoichiometry and thickness profiles. The optical function of the fabricated refractive aspheric deposits has been measured to be similar to one performed by axicon lenses.     

Aspheric wave-front recording optics for holographic gratings

The geometric theory of aspheric wave-front recording optics is extended to include the fourth-order groove parameters that correspond to the fourth-order holographic terms in the light-path function. We derived explicit expressions of the groove parameters by analytically following an exact ray-tracing procedure for a double-element optical system that consists of a point source, an ellipsoidal mirror, and an ellipsoidal grating blank. Design examples of holographic gratings for an in-plane Eagle-type vacuum-UV monochromator are given to demonstrate the capability of the present theory in the design of aspheric wave-front recording optics.     

Automated optimization of an aspheric light-emitting diode lens for uniform illumination

In this paper, an automated optimization method in the sequential mode of ZEMAX is proposed in the design of an aspheric lens with uniform illuminance for an LED source. A feedback modification is introduced in the design for the LED extended source. The user-defined merit function is written out by using ZEMAX programming language macros language and, as an example, optimum parameters of an aspheric lens are obtained via running an optimization. The optical simulation results show that the illumination efficiency and uniformity can reach 83% and 90%, respectively, on a target surface of 40 mm diameter and at 60 mm away for a 1×1 mm LED source.     

Continuous Vat Photopolymerization for Optical Lens Fabrication (Small 40/2023)

Optical lenses require feature resolution and surface roughness that are beyond most (3D) printing methods. A new continuous projection-based vat photopolymerization process is reported that can directly shape polymer materials into optical lenses with microscale dimensional accuracy (< 14.7 µm) and nanoscale surface roughness (< 20 nm) without post-processing. The main idea is to utilize frustum layer stacking, instead of the conventional 2.5D layer stacking, to eliminate staircase aliasing. A continuous change of mask images is achieved using a zooming-focused projection system to generate the desired frustum layer stacking with controlled slant angles. The dynamic control of image size, objective and imaging distances, and light intensity involved in the zooming-focused continuous vat photopolymerization are systematically investigated. The experimental results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed process. The 3D-printed optical lenses with various designs, including parabolic lenses, fisheye lenses, and a laser beam expander, are fabricated with a surface roughness of 3.4 nm without post-processing. The dimensional accuracy and optical performance of the 3D-printed compound parabolic concentrators and fisheye lenses within a few millimeters are investiagted. These results highlight the rapid and precise nature of this novel manufacturing process, demonstrating a promising avenue for future optical component and device fabrication.     

空间用平板形菲涅耳透镜的设计和光学效率研究

研究平板形菲涅耳太阳聚光透镜的光学问题,给出了线聚焦和点聚焦透镜的设计方法,讨论了设计参数对透镜光学效率的影响,为这类透镜的最优设计提供理论依据。