Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award-2016

A fabrication technique: Manifold cost reduction of optical lenses

Abhijit Chandra Roy, MridulYadav, Edward Peter Arul, and AnimangsuGhatak

Abstract:
Optical lenses with an aspherical surface profilecan significantly reduce optical defects such

as spherical aberrations and capture high quality, aberration free images. Conventionally, such

lenses aremade using hard solid materials, such as glass, quartz, fused silica, sapphire and

zerodur (a glass ceramic). However, generating precision devices of desired optical

characteristics using these solids require multistep top-down processes, which

includesophisticated equipments, precise instrumentation, controlled temperature and humidity,

and often lengthy, arduous, multiple polishing steps. Due to which, the cost of these lenses are

much higher than the cost of their materials. Moreover, these devices are also susceptible to

certain unavoidable defects, e.g. surface roughness, inadvertent scratches and cracks.In this

context,we have demonstrate a simple, cost-effective and robust technique to fabricate variety of

soft optical lenses starting from plano-convex, meniscus, biconvex, aspherical plano-convex

lenses,super-spherical solid immersion to exotic lenses not achieved via conventional methods.

The method is based on arrested spreading of sessile drop of a transparent, cross-linkable

polymeric liquid on a solid substrate heated to an elevated temperature.The image forming

capability of these lenses are tested by capturing micro-objects, and micro biological samples as

for example, LCD display pixel, blood sample, neuron cell, wing of a mosquito, E-coli bacteria,

malaria pathogen etc. This innovation open a brand new window forthe fabrication technique of

soft polymeric optical lenses in a simple, ultra-fast, cost effective and unconventional way. There

is a huge possibilities to scale up the technique for industrial scale production of these lenses.
 Images of the fabricated lenses

a b c

d e j f

1mm

Figure 1: Side view of different variety of lenses, (a),(b) are plano-convex lenses

fabricated at different conditions, (c) solid immersion lens, (d) meniscus lens (e) biconvex

lens, (f) colored lens (lens filter system)

 Comparison of the images captured by the commercial lens and the lens fabricated by

our method:

Our with ~1000x magnification Nikon lens with 100x magnification

(a) (b)

Less than 5 Rupee 15 mm More than 50,000 Rupee 15 mm

Figure 2, (a) Images of red blood cell captured by our lens using the arrangement

shown below. (b) Image of the same blood cell captured by commercial 100x lens acquired

from Nikon.

From the figure 2, it is clear that the image captured by our lens is more magnified and

having more depth of field than the image captured by the commercial lens. In terms of cost,

~10000 times reduction of the cost can be achieved.

 object

camera mount

pin hole

lens
black sheet

object

10x
objective

camera mount

pin hole

lens
black sheet

Figure 3, Module for capturing the images of micro objects using our lenses.
Images of different micro objects and microorganism are shown below:

Pixel of LCD
Neuron cell 10 mm monitor 50 mm Textile fiber

DH5-Alpha E.coli 10 mm Malaria pathogen 5 mm Human Teeth

Human Skin Mosquito proboscis 50 mm Small intestine 50 mm

Mosquito wing 50 mm Mosquito wing 50 mm Mosquito wing 20 mm

Figure 4: Images of different micro-objects are captured using our lenses.

Advantages of the fabrication techniques:

The main advantages of this process, (1) The lenses are made in an inexpensive and single step

process that involves only free surface of liquid, thus effectively eliminating problems related to

surface finish or roughness. (2) The lens parameters (such as curvature, focal length,

magnifications) can easily be tuned just by varying some of the parameters. (3) The proposed

method can be extended for generating various kind of lenses as for example plano-convex,

meniscus lens, biconvex lens, colored lens (Lens- filter system) and finally solid immersion

lenses of almost any desired curvature.(4) The fabrication process is ultrafast which makes it

suitable for scale up and mass production. (5) As the lenses are made up of soft and elastomeric

polymeric material, the chances of getting cracked or scratched on the surfaces are diminished.

(6) Addition of suitable additives to the pre-polymer can be used to tune the optical property of

the lenses (7) The surface energy of the material (PDMS) used for preparing the lenses is very

less (~20 mN/L), maintenance of the surface is easy as compare to conventional solid lenses.