An accurate and inexpensive integral micro-optical system for coupling and
aligning optical fibers with other optical components, such as other
optical fibers, diffusers, beam shapers, beam splitters, mirrors, or
lenses is disclosed. The micro-optical coupler disclosed comprises one or
more fiberport collimators and one or more microlens arrays, optically
aligned during fabrication so that an optical fiber, or other source of
light, was coupled to another optical fiber, or other light receiver, by
simple inserting the optical source in one side of the micro-coupler and
inserting the optical receiver in the other side of the micro-coupler.
Often the fabrication process for this system can be done in a single
lithography procedure. Since the optical axis of each component was
aligned during the fabrication step, no subsequent alignment was
required.