Novel technology for dispensing liquid polymers of a wide viscosity range on a picoliter scale for photonic applications

We present a new technology which enables the local resolution production of polymer-based micro-optical components, e.g. in photonic 3D packaging systems. The main advantage of this innovative technology is the capability to dispense liquids of a wide viscosity range (200 – 10.000 mPa*s) on a picoliter scale enabling the use of solvent-free liquid polymers. The newly engineered picoliter dispensing system features the possibility to place liquids on substrates with high positioning accuracy and high flexibility of volume variation and shape. The placement of active and passive micro-optical components for photonic packaging plays an important role in improving optical interfaces, especially in data and telecom applications and optical sensor technology. In this work the capability of this picoliter dispensing system is exemplarily demonstrated on single detached microlenses as well as microlens arrays (MLA) using solvent-free, viscous UV curable hybrid polymers OrmoComp® and OrmoClear®FX. The preliminary results of optical characterisations of the fabricated components verify the advantage of this novel technology over competitive manufacturing methods such as inkjet printing in terms of printability of solvent-free polymers since a comparable optical performance can be obtained while saving solvent evaporation steps.