| Compound eyes in nature present intriguing topics in detecting technology because of their unique characteristics, such as wide field-of-view(FOV), high sensitivity and small volume. Artificial implementation of compound eyes has attracted a great deal of research interest in medical, industrial and military applications as well. Contemporarily, polymers are been applied in fabricating micrometer-sized elements, which resemble the crystals in compound eyes. Therefore, polymer synthesis of artificial ommatidia are recently been studied by using the effect of self-focusing.In this paper, some research work was carried out as following:(1) The structure and function of compound eyes were studied, and the conclusion that crystals were were the key elements to fabricate artificial ommatidia has been drawn.(2) The property of SU-8 was induced. The refractive index of SU-8 polymer increased as the exposure lasts, in accord with the nonlinear effect of Gaussian beam..(3) The formation of ommatidium was simulated by using Finite-different Time-domain (FDTD) method. A model of micro-lens array was set up and crystals were formed behind the lenses, indicating the feasibility of fabrication compound eyes by using self-focus effect.(4) A micro lens array was fabricated using melting method, and the image of each lens was studied. Based on the micro-lens array, the planar compound eye arranged by ommatidia was finally formed.(5) A testing system is set up to detect the cyrstals. The result of experiments indicated the fine structure of ommatidium has been made in the lab and the artificial compound eyes are able to converge light.
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