Patent ID: 6959870

Claim:
An LED-based planar light illumination (PLIM) chip for use in a planar light illumination and imaging (PLIIM) based system, comprising: a semiconductor substrate supporting a light emitting diode (LED) array including a linear array of LEDs, each LED having a light emitting source; a first microlens array having an array of focusing lenslets aligned in spatial registration with said linear array of LEDs; a second microlens array having an array of collimating lenslets aligned in spatial registration with said linear array of LEDs and said array of focusing lenslets; an IC package having a light transmission window, for containing said semiconductor substrate, said first microlens array, and said second microlens array, wherein each focusing lenslet in said first microlens array focuses a reduced-size image of the light emitting source of an LED in said LED array, towards a focal point above said second microlens array; wherein each collimating lenslet in said second microlens array collimates the light rays associated with the reduced size image of the corresponding light emitting source; and wherein each cylindrical lenslet diverges the collimated light beam so as to produce a spatially-incoherent planar light illumination beam (PLIB) component, which collectively produce a composite PLIB from the LED-based PLIM.