Micro-optics fabrication using blurred tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces blurred tomography, a novel volumetric additive manufacturing technique that enables rapid, smooth, freeform optical component fabrication, including lenses and overprinted structures, with performance comparable to commercial optics.

Contribution

The paper presents blurred tomography, a new method that eliminates layer artifacts in volumetric printing, allowing for high-quality freeform optical components and overprinting on fibers.

Findings

Successful fabrication of a plano-convex lens with commercial-level imaging.

First demonstration of overprinting a lens onto an optical fiber.

Elimination of striations enables smooth surface fabrication.

Abstract

We demonstrate the fabrication of millimeter-sized optical components using tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (VAM). By purposely blurring the writing beams through the use of a large etendue source, the layer-like artifacts called striations are eliminated enabling the rapid and direct fabrication of smooth surfaces. We call this method blurred tomography, and demonstrate its capability by printing a plano-convex optical lens with comparable imaging performance to that of a commercially-available glass lens. Furthermore, due to the intrinsic freeform design nature of VAM, we demonstrate the double-sided fabrication of a biconvex microlens array, and for the first time demonstrate overprinting of a lens onto an optical fiber using this printing modality. This approach to VAM will pave the way for low-cost, rapid-prototyping of freeform optical components.