High quality micro liquid crystal phase lenses for full resolution image steering in auto-stereoscopic displays

Abstract

The use of pixel-level tunable liquid crystal (LC) lenses to steer the images shown on a flat panel display in full resolution for auto-stereoscopic applications was proposed. Micro lenticular LC lenses of different full widths ranging from 40 to 140 µm were designed and fabricated with laser patterned transparent ITO electrodes as narrow as 10 µm in width and two LC materials of high birefringence. Optical characterization of the lenses showed consistent parabolic phase profiles closely matched to that of ideal lenses. A proof-of-concept device with an array of tunable micro LC lenses each covers two sub-pixels of different colors was fabricated and applied on a standard computer monitor to confirm its capability of sub-pixel-level image steering.

Coherence properties of different light sources and their effect on the image sharpness and speckle of holographic displays

“…Holographic displays can reconstruct three-dimensional (3D) images with full wavefront information 1–6 , which is free from issues such as lack of accommodation depth cue, discontinuous motion parallax and crosstalk 7–11 . Light source plays a critical role in holographic displays, and the conventional requirement is a high degree of coherence for achieving sharp reconstructed images.…”

Liquid Crystal Microlenses for Autostereoscopic Displays

“…Thus, the lens could move (shift) sequentially on the horizontal direction to project the images to different viewing angle. Another work propose the use of patterned microlenses with sizes similar to the pixel pitch to obtain a full resolution autostereoscopic display [68]. Another original contribution is the proposal of this type of lenses to work in autostereoscopic devices, demonstrating the focal length tunability, the deviation of images [69] and the tuning of the 3D distance.…”

Screening for Stereopsis of Children Using an Autostereoscopic Smartphone

“…However, some defects, e.g., the lower image resolution, reduced brightness, small viewing angles, and crosstalk, limited the application of the traditional method. Novel technologies have been created to address this problem, such as the use of the sub-pixel-level tunable lenticular liquid crystal (LC) lens array to obtain the same resolution as a 2D-display panel [17] or multidirectional backlight to provide a very efficient display [18].…”