Femtosecond laser fabrication of SiC microlens arrays as integrated light homogenizer and splitter

Silicon carbide (SiC) plays a vital role in special optics because of its stable physicochemical and excellent optical properties; however, making the fabrication of SiC considerably more difficult. In this study, femtosecond laser-assisted inductively coupled plasma etching (ICP) technology is proposed to achieve the efficient fabrication of large-area microlens arrays on the surface of silicon carbide. As an illustration, the microlens array was used for high-quality beam homogenization (uniformity is up to 90%) of the transmitted and reflected Gaussian light beams with a wavelength of 532 nm. The beam-splitting ratio can be dynamically adjusted (from 1.2 to 3.2) by controlling the angle of the incident light, indicating that the SiC microlens arrays can act as an integrated optical homogenizer and beam splitter. This method demonstrates the broad application prospects of SiC in miniaturized and integrated special optics and provides new ideas for further applications of SiC in integrated optical systems.