Fabrication of soft reflective microoptical elements using a replication process

Abstract

This paper reports the fabricated method and optical performance of soft, reflective elements with nonspherical surface. Based on excimer laser microdrilling and spin coating processes, a PMMA film suspended on microdrilled holes was used as a concave mold. Then, a high-reflectance material, mixed PDMS rubber polymers with TiO2 nanoscale powders, was cast on the PMMA mold. Finally, both of concave and convex elements could be fabricated through soft replica molding processes and these elements could directly reflect light without the deposition of metal coatings. Therefore, we proposed a model regarding a flexible cable with its weight suspended on fixed points to explain the formation mechanism of PMMA molds. With the change of diameters of microholes and thicknesses of PMMA films, the suspended height of films was surely controllable. Therefore, the curvature radiuses and shapes of these aspherical elements also depended on the diameters of microholes and the thicknesses of PMMA films. Experimental results demonstrated that soft reflective elements have good surface qualities and high-quality optical properties. Besides, all fabrication steps can be executed in ambient environment and at low temperature, the proposed method has a potential for mass production. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.