Rapid fabrication of highly integrated and high numerical aperture chalcogenide glass microlens arrays

•A refractive type of microlens arrays (MLAs) were fabricated on commercial chalcogenide glass (As2Se3).•A facile photoresist thermal reflow and soft mold imprinting process was used to fabricate the MLAs.•MLAs with 700 × 700 array size showed excellent structure uniformity and focusing capability.•focal lengths of 6.3–8.1 µm with high numerical aperture of 0.64–0.73 (wavelength range: 3–5 μm) was achieved.