Method to fabricate artificial compound eye

A method used to fabricate artificial compound eye was presented in this paper. The artificial compound eye is composed of ommatidia like that of an insect's compound eye. By studying the characteristic of different fabrication technique, analyzing the performance of materials and relationship between different materials, and composing the fabrication techniques and materials together, a method to manufacture micro array elements based on curvature substrate was proposed. In this method, microlens patterns used as ommatidia were fabricated by regular micro-fabrication. Soft-lithography was used to manufacture the deformed elastomer membrane to obtain opposite concave microlens patterns. Polymer replication was used to transfer the patterns onto the hemispherical dome substrate. Experiments were carried out and an artificial compound eye contain over 20 thousands ommatidias were fabricated.