Artificial compound eye-tipped optical fiber for wide field illumination

In this Letter, we present a novel, to the best of our knowledge, component with beam delivering and wide field beam homogenizing functions by grafting an artificial compound eye (ACE) micro-structure onto the polymer optical fiber (POF) end face. The 3D ACE mold is fabricated by femtosecond laser-assisted micro machining, and the ACE micro-structure is transferred onto the end face through high accuracy nano-imprinting. The resultant POF end face integrates over 400 spherical micro-lenses, enabling a 40% enhancement in both the acceptance angle and the effective numerical aperture. Meanwhile, the integrated ommatidia array serves as an outstanding beam homogenizer, shaping the output beam into quasi flat-top distribution, which demonstrates promise in wide field homogeneous illumination, by reflection and transmission imaging experiments in both visible and near infrared bands.