ABSTRACT
The development of methods to fabricate diffractive elements to function as microoptic lenses and lens arrays, as well as other optical elements, has become an active and productive area of research in recent years. For an excellent introductory review, the reader is referred to a Scientific American article by Veldkamp and McHugh [1]. The reason this has occurred is the availability of high-resolution photolithography techniques and equipment developed by the IC industry. There are other diffraction-based elements used in fiber optic devices and computer back plane applications [2,3]. Holographic elements to direct light or separate wavelengths are examples of such devices. We will cover these diffraction gratings in Chapter 7. In this chapter, we will be concerned only with those elements that act as lenses.
