This paper describes a liquid-filled tunable lenticular lens for switching between two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) images in naked-eye 3D displays. Compared with previous 2D/3D switchable displays, this tunable lenticular lens that is directly attached to a smartphone display can project both a 2D image with the original resolution of the smartphone display and a 3D image with high brightness. This lens is simply composed of transparent poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microchannels. While the thin top membrane on the microchannels is normally flat to transmit light without deflection for displaying 2D images, applying pressure to the microchannel deforms the membrane to acquire characteristics of lenticular lenses for 3D images. We successfully demonstrate the switching between the 2D and 3D modes. We believe that our lens can be applied as a part of a portable 2D/3D naked-eye 3D display.

No abstract

Figure 1: Concept of our work. We propose three types of close-packed liquid-filled tunable lens arrays with different lens geometries. Honeycomb structure is one of the closest packing of hexagonal structures. Hexagonal close-packed structure is the closest packing structure for circles. We evaluated their effective lens area, optical lens effects and durability by comparing these three types of lens arrays. ABSTRACTThis paper describes close-packed liquid-filled tunable microlens arrays for optical devices such as integral imaging systems. These lenses are simply composed of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microchannels. Applied pressure deforms the top membrane of microchannels to form convex lenses. These lenses have three advantages: (i) Uniform deformation by pressure-driven actuation, (ii) Adjustable optical characteristics without patterned electrode, (iii) High-density integration of tunable microlenses. We fabricated three types of lenses: "Honeycomb", "Ladybird" and "Spiderweb" as close-packed structure and showed that the "Spiderweb" type packing is the most suitable for close packing. We believe that these lenses can be applied to optical applications such as 3D displays based on integral photography.

No abstract

No abstract