Fabrication of diffractive optical elements on 3-D curved surfaces by capillary force lithography

We demonstrate the fabrication of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) on 3-Dimensional curved surfaces by capillary force lithography (CFL). Curved gratings with a period of 20 mu m and 820nm have been successfully fabricated in polymer on concave surfaces by CFL. The experiment results indicate that the capillary force lithography is an effective method to replicate DOEs on curved surfaces with a very high fidelity and a relatively fast speed. In addition, we found that the growth rate of the polymer in the sub-microfabrication is much faster and the step height is much closer to the master than that in the microfabrication for CFL, which makes CFL more attractive in the fabrication of DOEs with a sub-microscale or even nanoscale feature size than a microscale feature size. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America