Kunz, R. E.Herzig, H. P.Rossi, M.2013-01-172013-01-172013-01-17199510.1364/AO.34.005996https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/87930The refractive and the diffractive properties of planar micro-optical elements are investigated. The transition between purely refractive and purely diffractive planar microlenses is numerically simulated for the example of differently designed phase-matched Fresnel elements. Results obtained from numerical simulations and experiments show that the refractive and diffractive types exhibit a distinctly different behavior in the presence of small fabrication errors or wavelength deviations. Based on these results, design rules for various applications, including low- and high-numerical-aperture lenses and hybrid refractive–diffractive elements, are derived. For a high-numerical-aperture (f/# = 1.0) lens the experimental characterization of the irradiance distribution in the image space is presented and shown to agree well with theoretical predictions.Fresnel diffractiongeometrical opticsholographic optical elementsrefraction and diffractionoptical design techniquestext::journal::journal article::research article