Femtosecond laser fabrication of apertures on two-dimensional microlens arrays

Two-dimensional lattices of microspheres formed by self-assembly from colloidal solutions can be employed as microlens arrays. With applications in confocal microscopes, some types of parallel laser-surface processing or devices based on anomalous optical transmission, it is useful to improve the imaging properties of microspheres by generating an aperture on each of these lenses. This has been achieved by means of laser-induced forward transfer using femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser radiation. Some of the peculiarities observed in the experiments can be understood on the basis of field intensity calculations.

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