Fabrication of Aspheric Micro-Lens Mold with High Aspect Ratio

The optical pickup of our Small-Form-Factor Optical Disc Drives (SFFODDs) requires a micro-objective whose profile is composed of two aspheric surfaces. However, it is difficult to fabricate a micro-objective with an arbitrary aspheric surface and high aspect ratio using conventional techniques. We propose here a new method to fabricate an aspheric micro-lens mold with high aspect ratio. This method uses the micro-loading effect in Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) and isotropic Reactive Ion Etching (RIE). The micro-loading effect is a phenomenon that leads to different etching depths depending on the aperture size of the mask layer used in etching. We fabricated an aspheric micro-lens mold for the prototype by using the proposed method after experimental evaluations of the micro-loading effect for a feasibility study. The profile of the first prototype was slightly different from the designed one according as the distance from the lens center increase. The profile error of the second prototype was reduced by using a mask that had multiple apertures with the smallest aperture located outside the area where the crater was formed. Our proposed method was found to be effective for fabricating a micro-lens mold with an arbitrary aspheric surface and high aspect ratio.