Investigation of an optical method for determining the average radius of curvature of micro-optical lenticular lens arrays

Micro-optical elements are of great importance in areas of optoelectronics and information processing. Establishing fast, reliable methods for characterization and quality control of these elements is important in order to maintain the optical performance in a high volume production process. We investigate an optical technique, applied to a polymer-based, injection moulded, lenticular array, but the method is also applicable for the tooling for these elements. The cylindrical lenses have feature sizes of 1-15 mu m. The method is based on observation of the intensity distribution, which can be obtained in the far field of surface reflections resulting from a plane wave incident on the lenticular array. The intensity distribution of the diffraction orders is highly correlated with the shape of the illuminated lenslets. This is exploited to attain information about possible defects and shape variations that have arisen in the moulding process. The experimental results are compared with a model, based on the Fraunhofer approximation to the Huygens-Fresnel principle. Furthermore, the optical elements under investigation are probed using a scanning probe microscope. Hence, access to accurate topological data of the elements is attained and used to confirm the validity of the proposed optical technique.