Economical rapid-prototyping of aspherical lenses

We present a rapid-prototyping process to fabricate aspherical lens arrays based on surface deformation due to thermal expansion of PDMS. Using laser-structuring and molding in combination with an FEM-based shape optimization, we were able to design, fabricate and characterize different micro-lens arrays. This fabrication process can be used for almost any kind of arbitrary lens shape, which allows for a large design freedom for micro lenses.