Leveraging wafer-level manufacturing process limitations to increase large-scale fused silica microlens array uniformity

The wafer-level production of Fused Silica microlens arrays is limited by systematic process non-uniformities. The common molten resist-reflow process with subsequent dry-etching allows for manufacturing of microlens arrays on 200 mm wafers. A thorough process review yielded one free parameter. By switching from the geometrical lens description via radius of curvature and conic constant to a functional assessment via the optical design figure of merit we can describe microlens via their optical quality for the intended application with one parameter for a wide variety of cases. Leveraging these points we show improvements on the uniformity of microlens arrays by a factor of 2 for Fused Silica microlens arrays bigger than 100 mm by 100 mm.