IR Artificial Compound Eye

Abstract In this work, a 3D IR artificial compound eye (ACE) optical component is fabricated using thermoplastic IR polymer material. The femtosecond laser‐assisted wet etching and the 3D nano‐imprinting techniques are proposed for fabricating this thin shell multi‐aperture component. The prepared component is close‐packed with over 1000 high‐quality micro‐facet‐lenslets (ommatidia) on the semispherical thin shell dome with base radius of 2.7 mm and sag height of 2.1 mm, enabling enlarged field of view to 148°. The ommatidia with diameter of 150 µm and numerical aperture of 0.35 are demonstrated to have a practical spatial resolution up to 160 lp mm −1 . IR imaging experiments (both in passive and active scenarios) confirm its outstanding optical properties and uniformity, and demonstrate the probability of thermal target imaging with such component in the near‐infrared band. The proposed fabrication strategy shows remarkable efficiency and advantage in massive replication, and such ACE component predicts its potential in emerging applications, such as IR imaging, target tracking, and so on.