SPIE - Education Design, Modeling and Fabrication Techniques for Micro-optics: Applications to Display, Imaging, Sensing and Metrology SC1217

This course provides an overview of the various design and fabrication techniques available to the optical engineer for micro / nano optics, diffractive optics and holographic optics. Emphasis is put on DFM (Design For Manufacturing) for wafer scale fabrication, Diamond Turning Machining (DTM) and holographic exposure. The course shows how design techniques can be tailored to address specific fabrication techniques' requirements and production equipment constraints. The course will also address various current application fields such as display, imaging, sensing and metrology. The course is built around 4 points: (1) design, (2) modeling, (3) fabrication/mass production and (4) application fields. We will also review in details the basic micro-optics building blocks and the overall architecture of the iPhone X IR human face sensor. 1) The course will review various design techniques used in standard optical CAD tools such as Zemax and CodeV to design Diffractive Optical Elements (DOEs), Micro-Lens Arrays (MLAs), hybrid optics and refractive micro-optics, Holographic Optical Element (HOE), as well as the various numerical design techniques for Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs). 2) Modeling single micro optics or complex micro-optical systems including MLAs, DOEs, HOEs, CGHs, and other hybrid elements can be a difficult or nearly impossible task when using classical ray tracing algorithms. We will review techniques using physical optics propagation to model not only multiple diffraction effects and their interferences, but also systematic and random fabrication errors, multi-order propagation and other effects which cannot be modeled accurately through ray tracing. 3) Following the design (1) and modeling tasks (2), the optical engineer usually needs to perform a DFM process so that his/her design can be fabricated by the target manufacturing partner/vendor on specific equipment. We will review such DFM for wafer fab via optical lithography (tape-out process), single point diamond turning (SPDT), or holographic optics recording specification. The course also reviews fracturing techniques to produce GDSII layout files for specific lithographic fabrication techniques and manufacturing equipment. 4) In order to point out the potential of such micro-optics for consumer products, this section reviews current application fields for which such elements are providing an especially good match, impossible to implement with traditional optics, such as depth mapping sensing (structured illumination based sensor) and augmented reality display (waveguide grating combiner optics). We will also review applications in high resolution incremental/absolute optical encoders. Design and modeling techniques will be described for such applications fields, and optical hardware sub-system implementations and micro-optics elements will be shown and detailed.