Here the pyroelectric functionality of a Lithium Niobate (LN) substrate is used for non-contact manipulation of liquids. In this work we introduced the use of a pyro-electrohydrodynamc (PEHD) dispenser for the manipulation of high viscous polymer materials leading to the fabrication of arrays of microlenses. The set-up used for the experiment is described and the fabricated microlenses are analyzed by means of the Digital Holography (DH) set-up in transmission mode and through profilometric analysis. PMMA based ink was employed for the realization of optical quality microsctructures whose geometrical properties and, hence, the focal lengths were controlled by modifying the printing configuration of the PEHD method. The profilometric results are in agreement with those calculated using the digital holography technique.

Date Published: 8 May 2012
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8428, Micro-Optics 2012, 84280O (8 May 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.922624

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8428:
Micro-Optics 2012
Hugo Thienpont; Jürgen Mohr; Hans Zappe; Hirochika Nakajima, Editor(s)