Method of fabricating lenticular arrays

Claim 1

A process for manufacturing lenticular arrays which comprises (a) coating a 100 silicon wafer with a first protective layer of silicon oxide and a layer of photoresist over the oxide layer, (b) exposing the photoresist through a photomask having a uniform grating of the desired periodicity of the lens array, (c) developing the photoresist and etching through the oxide layer to form a regular series of openings to the silicon substrate, (d) anisotropically etching the silicon substrate to form a series of V-grooves with very sharp bottoms in the openings wherein the walls of the grooves intersect along the 111 planes, (e) removing the photoresist and oxide layers, (f) replicating the V-grooved silicon substrate in nickel to form a series of inverted V-peaks, (g) spin-coating a hardenable liquid resin onto the nickel replica to form a series of lenses, and (h) hardening the resin thereby forming a lens array having a minimum of area between the lenses.