Direct Laser Fabrication of Cylindrical Lenses in Wide Band Gap Materials

The Fluorine laser microstructuring technique enables the direct laser fabrication of cylindrical lenses and lens arrays thereof in wide band gap materials. For the mask projection technique, a special mask geometry was calculated, which allows the fabrication of cylindrical lenses with a nearly optimum curved surface. Based on our results of processing fused silica and borosilicate glass, we investigated the possibility to apply these microstructuring technique to wide band gap materials like calcium fluoride. The radius of curvature (ROC) can be adjusted by the process parameters laser pulse fluence and pulse-to-pulse overlap in a range of 130 to 450 µm micrometer. A minimal surface roughness of 100 nm RMS can be reached.

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