Microsyst Technol (2007) 13: 339342 DOI 10.

1007/s00542-006-0217-9

T E C H N I C A L P A PE R

P. Zhang G. Londe J. Sung E. Johnson M. Lee H. J. Cho

Microlens fabrication using an etched glass master

Received: 31 August 2005 / Accepted: 20 January 2006 / Published online: 24 May 2006 Springer-Verlag 2006

Abstract This paper presents a micromachining technique to fabricate microlenses using an etched glass master. The isotropic etching prole of the glass master was utilized for microlens replication. The master was treated by C4F8 plasma to form a conformal antiadhesion layer. Lens arrays were replicated on polymer substrates by hot embossing. Microlenses with a large numerical aperture could be fabricated with this method. This work facilitates and simplies fabrication steps for microlenses.

1 Introduction
Due to the increasing demand in optical communication, display and storage, micro-optical components and their fabrication methods have been studied actively. For refractive microlens fabrication, gray mask lithography (Morgan et al. 2004), thermal reow (Daly et al. 1990), surface-controlled microdispensing (Jeong and Lee 2002) and modied UV curing (Park et al. 1999) have been investigated. Among those, the thermal reow method has been widely used due to its relatively straightforward fabrication steps. However, the thermal
P. Zhang (&) H. J. Cho Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA E-mail: pe463563@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Tel.: +1-407-2077244 Fax: +1-407-2077244 G. Londe Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA J. Sung E. Johnson College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA M. Lee Applied Chemical Engineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 500-757, South Korea

reow is hard to control and often unpredictable. In addition, the reowed photoresist structure itself cannot be used directly for optical applications. Therefore, replication processing should be performed by making an overplated metal master and regenerating the original shape on polymer substrates. This process is time consuming and a chance of introducing additional defects could be doubled due to the repeated pattern transferphotoresist to metal master, then metal master to polymer substrate. In this work, we propose to use an etched glass master for fabricating microlenses. The glass master is fabricated using a simple micromachining method. An Au/Cr mask layer with pin-hole arrays is made by lithography on the glass substrate and then the glass substrate is etched with HF solution to create micro concaves. An anti-adhesion layer is formed on the master by plasma treatment, which prevents damage of the glass master during the demolding step. Thermoplastic polymers with good optical characteristics were characterized and used as lens materials. Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and cyclic olen copolymer (COC) are selected as the lens materials. PMMA is widely used for micro optical components due to its exceptional optical properties. COC is a highly transparent, chemically resistant thermoplastic polymer which is suited for the optical elements. It also has low water absorption, less than 0.01%, compared to other polymers, e.g., PMMA (0.3%) (Nilsson and Balslev Kristensen 2004).

2 Fabrication of the glass master

A 3 in. Pyrex glass wafer was cleaned with Alconox detergent and DI water to remove bulk contaminants from the surface. Then trichloroethylene, acetone, isopropanol and DI water were used in sequence to remove the residue on the glass surface. A schematic view of the glass master fabrication process steps is illustrated in Fig. 1. After cleaning the substrate, Cr (200 A) and Au

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Fig. 1 Glass master fabrication process. a Au/Cr depositing and photoresist coating b Patterning c Au/Cr etching d Glass etching

Fig. 2 Contact angle test of the glass substrate without plasma treatment

(2,000 A) lms were deposited on the glass wafer as a mask layer by thermal evaporation. 2 lm-thick positive photoresist (Shipley 1400-27) was spin-coated on the wafer at 3,000 rpm (Fig. 1a). Circular patterns were transferred to the photoresist by UV-lithography (Fig. 1b) and then to the Au/Cr layer by chemical etching (Fig. 1c). The glass substrate was etched in the pure HF solution for 10 min and rinsed in the DI water for 5 min (Fig. 1d). After the cavity structures were formed in the glass wafer, the photoresist and Au/Cr layers were removed (Fig. 1e). A layer of Teon-like anti-adhesion lm was deposited on the glass master by plasma treatment. During the plasma process, the C4F8 and He were introduced into the reaction chamber with ow rates of 25 and 24 sccm, respectively. Contact angle tests were carried out on the glass substrates with and without plasma treatment to conrm the formation of the anti-adhesion layer. It is shown in Fig. 2 that the contact angle of the glass substrate without plasma treatment is 55. In contrast, the contact angle of the plasma-treated glass substrate is 97 as shown in Fig. 3. This indicates that the master surface has a low surface energy, which can facilitate in demolding. Polymers do not adhere to the master surface after this surface treatment.

higher than the glass transition temperature (Tg) of COC (PMMA). The thermoplastic materials then owed into the cavity structures of the glass master as shown in Fig. 4b. The master and the polymer substrate were separated after cooling and the microlens arrays were obtained (Fig. 4c). In practice, annealing was performed to reow the glass to smooth out the surface after the etching process. The glass master was placed in the furnace and the temperature was elevated to 525C with the ramping rate of 10C/min. After holding for 2 h, the glass master was cooled down to the room temperature. Figure 5 shows the temperature, pressure and process variation in time at three steps of the process. During the rst 15 min, the substrate was heated to the temperature (154C) which was above the Tg of PMMA and COC. The measurement Tg of PMMA and COC were in the next section. Then a pressure of 5.4 MPa was applied

3 Replication of microlens array

Hot embossing was used to produce replicated PMMA and COC lens arrays as shown in Fig. 4. After plasma treatment, the glass master was ready to use. A sheet of pure Teon lm of 1 cm in thickness was placed on the bottom plate of the embossing machine as the buer layer. A 1 mm-thick COC (or 2.5 mm thick PMMA) sheet was placed on top of the Teon lm (Fig. 4a). Pressure was applied at an elevated temperature that is

Fig. 3 Contact angle test of the glass substrate after plasma treatment

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SEM images of the glass master and replicated microlens are shown in Fig. 6. Figure 6a shows the replicated polymer microlens. The lens height is approximately 70.7 lm. The replicated microlens array is shown in Fig. 6b.

4 Measurement and calculation

4.1 Glass transition temperature Figure 7 shows the results of the glass transition temperature measurement using the dierential scanning calorimeter. For the PMMA and COC we used, the Tg are 106 and 134C, respectively. 4.2 Absorbance of PMMA and COC Figure 8 shows the absorbance of PMMA and COC. PMMA is transparent at above 400 nm, and COC is transparent even under 400 nm which means COC is highly transparent and suitable over the wide and nearUV range.
Fig. 4 Hot embossing process: a preheating b embossing

4.3 Lens parameters of PMMA and COC microlenses From the SEM images, we could get the height (h) and diameter (D) of an individual microlens. The radius of the curvature (R) is calculated by: h D2 R 2 8h 1

The focal length (f) of the lenses can be obtained from the well-known equation:
Fig. 5 Temperature, pressure and time condition during the hot embossing

R n n0

and held for 6 min. At this crucial stage, the polymer owed into the cavity and microlens arrays were formed. The load was removed before the cooling step of 10 min. The hot embossing process was completed after the demolding at room temperature.

where n is the refractive index of the material and n0 is the reection index of the air. The refractive indices of PMMA, COC and air are 1.49, 1.53 and 1, respectively. Numerical aperture (NA) is given as:

Fig. 6 Fabricated convex microlenses: a Replicated PMMA/COC microlenses b Microlenses array

342 Table 1 Lens parameters of the fabricated microlenses h PMMA COC 70.7 70.7 D 200 200 R 106.1 106.1 F 216.5 200.2 NA 0.46 0.50

Fig. 7 Dierential scanning calorimeter (DSC) thermograms of PMMA and COC

layer. PMMA and COC were selected as substrates for pattern transfer via thermal embossing. Microlenses with a large numerical aperture could be fabricated. The method is simple, reproducible and inexpensive compared to thermal reow method. This work can be used for various optical and acoustic applications where focusing and defocusing components are demanded.
Acknowledgments The authors thank National Science Foundation (CAREER ECS-0348603 and MRI ECS-0521497) for its support in this work.

References
Fig. 8 UVVIS spectra of PMMA and COC Daly D, Steven RF, Hutley CM, Davies N (1990) The manufacture of microlenses by melting photoresist. Meas Sci Technol 1:759 766 Jeong KH, Lee LP (2002) A new method of increasing numerical aperture of microlens for biophotonic MEMS presented at Microtechnologies in Medicine and Biology In: 2nd Annual International IEEE-EMB special topic conference Morgan B, Waits CM, Krizmanic J, Ghodssi R (2004) Development of a deep silicon phase fresnel lens using gray-scale lithography and deep reactive ion etching. J Microelectromech Syst 13:113120 Nilsson D, Balslev S Kristensen A (2004) A microuidic dye laser fabricated by nanoimprint lithography in a highly transparent and chemically resistant cyclo-olen copolymer (COC). J Micromech Microeng 15:296300 Park EH, Kim MJ, Kwon YS (1999) New fabrication technology of convex and concave microlens using UVcuring method. Presented at Lasers and Electro-Optics Society 1999 In: 12th Annual Meeting. LEOS 99,

NA

D 2f

The lens parameters of the replicated PMMA and COC microlens are listed in Table 1.

5 Conclusion
We have studied a micromachining technique using an etched glass mold for microlens fabrication. The glass master was fabricated by wet isotropic etching and was treated by plasma to form a conformal anti-adhesion