Abstract

Microlenses play a key role in photonic devices for the applications such as communications, medical imaging, wavefront detection, machine vision and others. Microlenses can be either refractive or diffractive with apertures ranging from few tens of µm to about a mm. Lenses can be made as discrete lenses but for may applications lens arrays are fabricated. Figure metrology for micro-lenses is likely to pose unique challenges. When compared to “macro-” optical elements, the aperture of microlenses is no longer very much larger than the wavelength of source light. Diffraction effects can thus no longer be neglected. For example, the focus shift may lead to a substantial systematic error in a radius-of-curvature measurement of a microlens.

© 2003 Optical Society of America