Self-assembling of PDMS microlens arrays through pyro-EHD for real-time 3D microscopy

The electrohydrodynamic effect has been exploited for the fabrication of polymeric microlenses through different approaches. Here we show that microlens arrays obtained with the pyro-EHD self-assembling process exhibit high fill-factor and good level of homogeneity, thus allowing to integrate them in a lightfield microscope. Digital holographic microscopy is used to characterize the fabricated microlens array. Afterwards, a Fourier lightfield microscope is built by placing this microlens array at the Fourier plane of the objective. We demonstrate for the first time that the self-assembled PDMS microlens array is suitable for 3D imaging of microscopic samples, computationally reconstructing the volume of a thick fluorescent sample.