Fabrication of two- and three-dimensional periodic submicron structures by holographic lithography with a 635 nm laser and matched photopolymer

2D and 3D submicron periodic structures are first fabricated by red-induced photopolymerization using a common 635 nm semiconductor laser and specially developed red-sensitive polymer material. The principle of this new photo- polymer material fabrication is explained and the absorption spectra of the material are measured. This fabrication technique allows a deeper penetration into volume and larger interference irradiation area which is more than 1 cm2. The optical design, theoretical calculations and experimental results including diffraction patterns verifying the forma- tion of periodic structures are presented. Compared with other fabrication technologies using high-power lasers, this approach has greatly reduced the demand for laser apparatus. Therefore, it is much more accessible to most. laboratories and potentially usable in holographic fabrication of photonic crystals and devices in micro electro-mechanical systems （MEMS）.

Holographic laser fabrication of 3D artificial compound μ-eyes

The demand for fast optical image acquisition without movable optical elements(e.g.,for self-driving car technology)can be met using bioinspired 3D compound eyes.3D laser processing strategies enable designable 3D structuring but suffer from low fabrication efficiency,which significantly limits their applications in producing complex 3D optical devices.Herein,we demonstrate a versatile yet simple wet-etching-assisted holographic laser fabrication method for the development of 3D compound eyes.Artificial compoundμ-eyes can be readily fabricated by programming a 3D spot array for the parallel ablation of a curved fused silica surface,followed by controllable etching in a hydrofluoric(HF)acid solution.A 3D-concave-lens array made on a curved surface over an area of 100μm cross-section with each lenslet of 10μm radius was fabricated with high fidelity and excellent imaging/focusing quality.The resultant 3D-concave-lens can serve as a hard template for the mass production of soft compound eyes through soft lithography.Additionally,using a generative adversarial network(GAN)-based deep learning algorithm,image restoration was conducted for each lenslet,which retained a large field of view and significantly improved image quality.This method provides a simple solution to the requirements of compoundμ-eyes required by Industry 4.0.

Holographically fabricated, highly reflective nanoporous polymeric distributed Bragg reflectors with red, green,and blue colors [Invited]

We report holographic fabrication of nanoporous distributed Bragg reflector(DBR) films with periodic nanoscale porosity via a single-prism conuration. The nanoporous DBR films result from the phase separation in a material recipe, which consists of a polymerizable acrylate monomer and nonreactive volatile solvent. By changing the interfering angle of two laser beams, we achieve the nanoporous DBR films with highly reflective red,green, and blue colors. The reflection band of the nanoporous DBR films can be tuned by further filling different liquids into the pores inside the films, resulting in the color change accordingly. Experimental results show that such kinds of nanoporous DBR films could be potentially useful for many applications, such as color filters and refractive index sensors.