Bioinspired Fabrication of High‐Quality 3D Artificial Compound Eyes by Voxel‐Modulation Femtosecond Laser Writing for Distortion‐Free Wide‐Field‐of‐View Imaging

The small field-of-view (FOV) limits the range of vision in various detecting/imaging devices from biological microscopes to commercial cameras and military radar. To date, imaging with FOV over 90° has been realized with fish-eye lenses, catadioptric lens, and rotating cameras. However, these devices suffer from inherent imaging distortion and require multiple bulky elements. Inspired by compound eyes found in nature, here a small-size (84 μm), distortion-free, wide-FOV imaging system is presented via an advanced 3D artificial eye architecture. The 3D artificial eye structure is accomplished by exploiting an effective optical strategy — high-speed voxel-modulation laser scanning (HVLS). The eye features a hexagonal shape, high fill factor (FF) (100%), large numerical aperture (NA) (0.4), ultralow surface roughness (2.5 nm) and aspherical profile, which provides high uniformity optics (error < ±6%) and constant resolution (FWHM = 1.7 ± 0.1 μm) in all directions. Quantitative measurement shows the eye reduces imaging distortion by two/three times under 30°/45° incidence, compared with a single lens. The distortion-free FOV can be controlled from 30° to 90°.

[1]  C. Bernhard,et al.  Structural and functional adaptation in a visual system - Strukturelle und funktionelle Adaptation in einem visuellen System , 1967 .

[2]  Gui Yun Tian,et al.  Panoramic imaging - a review , 2003, Comput. Graph..

[3]  Christelle Monat,et al.  Integrated optofluidics: A new river of light , 2007 .

[4]  J. Baumberg,et al.  Mimicking the colourful wing scale structure of the Papilio blumei butterfly. , 2010, Nature nanotechnology.

[5]  Tomás Pajdla,et al.  Structure from motion with wide circular field of view cameras , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[6]  C. Pan,et al.  Improved broadband and quasi-omnidirectional anti-reflection properties with biomimetic silicon nanostructures. , 2007, Nature nanotechnology.

[7]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Micrometre-scale silicon electro-optic modulator , 2005, Nature.

[8]  Hong Xia,et al.  Femtosecond laser rapid prototyping of nanoshells and suspending components towards microfluidic devices. , 2009, Lab on a chip.

[9]  Mohsen Kavehrad,et al.  Receiver designs and channel characterization for multi-spot high-bit-rate wireless infrared communications , 2001, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[10]  R. Gattass,et al.  Achieving λ/20 Resolution by One-Color Initiation and Deactivation of Polymerization , 2009, Science.

[11]  Andrew R. Parker,et al.  Biomimetics of photonic nanostructures. , 2007, Nature nanotechnology.

[12]  Saulius Juodkazis,et al.  Three‐Dimensional Spiral‐Architecture Photonic Crystals Obtained By Direct Laser Writing , 2005 .

[13]  Qing Yang,et al.  Fabrication of bioinspired omnidirectional and gapless microlens array for wide field-of-view detections , 2012 .

[14]  Dario Floreano,et al.  Miniature curved artificial compound eyes , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[15]  Luke P. Lee,et al.  Biologically Inspired Artificial Compound Eyes , 2006, Science.

[16]  Hong Xia,et al.  100% Fill-Factor Aspheric Microlens Arrays (AMLA) With Sub-20-nm Precision , 2009, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[17]  Andreas Tünnermann,et al.  Laser lithographic fabrication and characterization of a spherical artificial compound eye. , 2007, Optics express.

[18]  Viktor Malyarchuk,et al.  Digital cameras with designs inspired by the arthropod eye , 2013, Nature.

[19]  M. Wegener,et al.  Direct laser writing of three-dimensional photonic-crystal templates for telecommunications , 2004, Nature materials.

[20]  M. Gustafsson.  Nonlinear structured-illumination microscopy: wide-field fluorescence imaging with theoretically unlimited resolution. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[21]  W. H. Teh,et al.  Effect of low numerical-aperture femtosecond two-photon absorption on (SU-8) resist for ultrahigh-aspect-ratio microstereolithography , 2005 .

[22]  J. Feinberg,et al.  Continuous-wave self-pumped phase conjugator with wide field of view. , 1983, Optics letters.

[23]  Jason B Shear,et al.  Multiphoton fabrication of chemically responsive protein hydrogels for microactuation , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[24]  A. E. Spezio.  Electronic warfare systems , 2002 .

[25]  Qidai Chen,et al.  Protein-based soft micro-optics fabricated by femtosecond laser direct writing , 2014, Light: Science & Applications.

[26]  Eric Mazur,et al.  3D Cell‐Migration Studies using Two‐Photon Engineered Polymer Scaffolds , 2008 .

[27]  Single step fabrication of microlens arrays with hybrid HfO2-SiO2 sol-gel glass on conventional lens surface. , 2005, Optics express.

[28]  Satoshi Kawata,et al.  Improved spatial resolution and surface roughness in photopolymerization-based laser nanowriting , 2005 .