Design methodology accounting for fabrication errors in manufactured modified Fresnel lenses for controlled LED illumination.

The increasing demand for lightweight, miniaturized electronic devices has prompted the development of small, high-performance optical components for light-emitting diode (LED) illumination. As such, the Fresnel lens is widely used in applications due to its compact configuration. However, the vertical groove angle between the optical axis and the groove inner facets in a conventional Fresnel lens creates an inherent Fresnel loss, which degrades optical performance. Modified Fresnel lenses (MFLs) have been proposed in which the groove angles along the optical paths are carefully controlled; however, in practice, the optical performance of MFLs is inferior to the theoretical performance due to fabrication errors, as conventional design methods do not account for fabrication errors as part of the design process. In this study, the Fresnel loss and the loss area due to microscopic fabrication errors in the MFL were theoretically derived to determine optical performance. Based on this analysis, a design method for the MFL accounting for the fabrication errors was proposed. MFLs were fabricated using an ultraviolet imprinting process and an injection molding process, two representative processes with differing fabrication errors. The MFL fabrication error associated with each process was examined analytically and experimentally to investigate our methodology.