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The German company Nanoscribe designs and manufactures high-precision solutions for the additive production of microoptics. As a rule, the main advantages of additive technologies are the speed of prototype production and freedom of design, but the usual solutions in today's market are far from the resolution and accuracy required for the production of optical systems.
Nanoscribe has developed Photonic Professional GT 3D printers based on two-photon polymerization. The devices allow you to print a wide range of optical microsystems, including standard refractive microlenses, arbitrary-shaped optics, diffractive optical elements, and even multipole lenses. The technology allows to achieve the necessary smoothness of surfaces and high accuracy of forms, as well as create optics of miniature size and high complexity, unattainable when using traditional production methods.
One example of the successful application of the technology was the experiments of researchers at the University of Stuttgart on 3D printing of a two-lens group on top of a CMOS sensor (in the illustration above). Scientists not only managed to create a highly efficient and compact system, but also produce a working prototype in just one day. Another example is precision hemispherical lenses in the illustration below. The error of the structures relative to the center does not exceed 1 μm, and the surface roughness is about 10 nm. The array with a total area of 1 cm² consists of hemispheres 150 microns high.
Nanoscribe 3D printers provide a sufficiently high resolution for printing not only refractive, but also diffractive optical elements (DOEs). 3D-printed DOEs may have functionality beyond the capabilities of refractive optics - for example, an almost arbitrary distribution of light intensity in the far diffraction zone.
Photonic Professional GT 3D printers are capable of printing multilayer diffractive optical elements on top of glass substrates, creating a variety of functional prototypes in a matter of days or even hours.
