Maskless lithography and its applications in holography, diffractive optics and integrated photonics

Modern trends in optics and photonics are heading towards smaller feature sizes and complex structures of optical elements to be fabricated by lithographic processes. The rapid development of consumer optics and also research applications are, in addition, leading to an urge for flexible and fast processes to generate micro-patterns with optical functionality. In this talk, we present a maskless lithography setup based on a simple microscope setup and a digital-mirror-device (DMD) projection system to generate arbitrary microstructures in photosensitive resist or optical materials such as hybrid polymers directly. The former material class requires a soft stamp hot embossing process to create transparent optical structures and is especially suited for diffractive optics and holographic structures. However, the latter material class offers the possibility to instantaneously fabricate fully polymer based integrated photonic devices and components such as optical waveguides. We present our latest results utilizing both materials classes with an emphasis on polymer optics including diffractive optical elements and directly patterned optical waveguides and sensing structures.