Compact, fast‐response, continuous, and wide‐angle laser beam steerers

Abstract

A liquid crystal-cladding waveguide with resistive electrode configuration is proposed for laser beam steering applications. It can achieve wide-angle, continuous coverage, two-dimensional beam control with fast response time.With numerical validation, we find that in comparison with previous prismatic electrode approach, our device demonstrates higher compatibility with high birefringence liquid crystal materials, and thus, a more compact form factor can be realized. Such a beam steerer is attractive for a wide range of applications including automotive LiDAR, eye-tracking for near-eye displays, and high-precision 3D printing.

High-Precision Beam Angle Expander Based on Polymeric Liquid Crystal Polarization Lenses for LiDAR Applications

“…The magnification, as indicated by Equation ( 6), can increase substantially if we enlarge the focal length difference between f1 and f2. However, Equation (7) reveals that there is a trade-off between the angle magnification and system volume. In other words, when it comes to a practical situation, the magnification should be dictated by the allowable system volume.…”

“…In Table 2, d 1 and f 1 are manually setting variables, and f 2 /# is set to 0.64 and 1.1 at different wavelengths. The other parameters can then be calculated according to Equations ( 1)- (7). The BAE is designed to accommodate a maximum incident angle of 5 • .…”

“…Beam steering [1,2] has found widespread applications in near-eye displays, microscopy, and LiDAR (light detection and ranging). Both mechanical and non-mechanical beam controls have been developed [3][4][5][6][7]. Non-mechanical beam steering promises substantial benefits, and can be fulfilled by several approaches, including electrowetting [8,9], microlens arrays [10], polarization gratings [11,12], and optical phased arrays (OPA) [1,2].…”