3D printed lens on optical fiber tip for imaging applications

Current lens-based optics is limited in dimensions and shapes due to the fabrication process. With the development of 3D lithography in recent years, the polymer-based lens fabricated by direct laser writing based on two-photon lithography shows unique capabilities compared to those fabricated by traditional methods. It shows advantages such as fast writing speed and high resolution. However, for those tiny delicate structures such as resonators and waveguides, the quality will be losing if the speed is too high, besides, it costs time to fabricate large structures. In this paper, we present a promising three-dimensional microfabrication system based on single-photon polymerization using a digital micromirror device with a UV light source at 390 nm. The designed system has a high resolution and it needs shorter time for fabrication. Here, the lenses with different sizes and curvatures are fabricated directly on a single mode fiber tip, for optical fiber imaging system. The paper presents experiment-details of the design of the single-photon polymerization system, fabrication the optical components on optical fiber tip and the results for imaging applications. We demonstrate the optical design and manufacturing using a DMD-based 3D printer for potential applications for optics, fabrication of biosensor and imaging.