Nonmechanical bifocal zoom telescope

Valley, Pouria; Dodge, Mohammad Reza; Schwiegerling, Jim; Peyman, Gholam A.; Peyghambarian, N.

doi:10.1364/ol.35.002582

Cited by 42 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Therefore, people desire products featuring adjustable sizes and high image quality, such as telescopes [1,2], mobile lenses [3,4], pinhole cameras [5,6], and medical endoscopes [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Study of Optical Design on 9× Zoom Ratio by Using a Compensating Liquid Lens

Yen

Shih

2015

Applied Sciences

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This paper proposes using a liquid lens as a compensating lens and applying intermediate optics to achieve a 9× zoom ratio. The droplet shape and location of the liquid lens can be adjusted reversibly, enabling the focal length and position of the lens to be tuned by varying the voltage applied to a set of electrodes. Therefore, liquid lenses can replace complex lenses to reduce the total length of optomechanical systems. The CODE V built-in optimization method was used to determine the optimal liquid lens parameters at various zoom ratios. Several general optical aberrations were considered. Compared with a standard intermediate optics system featuring 9× zoom and no compensating lens, the proposed lens improved the Petzval surface curvature (PTZ) and modulation transfer function (MTF). Simulation results revealed that the PTZ decreased 10.92% and the MTF increased 3988% in 40 1p/mm.

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“…Therefore, people desire products featuring adjustable sizes and high image quality, such as telescopes [1,2], mobile lenses [3,4], pinhole cameras [5,6], and medical endoscopes [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Study of Optical Design on 9× Zoom Ratio by Using a Compensating Liquid Lens

Yen

Shih

2015

Applied Sciences

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“…Liquid crystal (LC) lenses have been explored extensively in recent years [1][2][3][4][5]. Because of electrically tunable focal lengths, these lenses have many applications, like three-dimensional displays, imaging systems, microscopes, zooming systems, optical tweezers, etc.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because of electrically tunable focal lengths, these lenses have many applications, like three-dimensional displays, imaging systems, microscopes, zooming systems, optical tweezers, etc. [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Compactness in size and easy tunability provides an edge for such lenses to be applied in portable mobile devices, like cell phones, cameras, and pico projectors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the power consumption, aperture, and switching time are still serious issues, particularly for portable devices. Several attempts have recently been made to improve the characteristics of such lenses [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. The main idea for the tunable LC lens is to provide the lens-like phase profile, i.e., converging or diverging to the propagating wave.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Low voltage tunable liquid crystal lens

Fan

Srivastava

et al. 2013

Opt. Lett.

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In this Letter, we report a method to prepare a liquid crystal (LC) lens based on a variable pretilt angle of a photoalignment (PA) layer. With precise control of the irradiance, such PA provides good control on the pretilt angle that can be tuned in the range of 1°-89°. Therefore, the precise control of the irradiance generates a spatially varying pretilt angle with any desired pretilt angle profile. Thus, the tunable LC lenses have been fabricated and characterized. With low voltage operations, easy fabrication, and relatively high switching speed, such lenses can be applied in many modern optical and photonic devices. -9]. The main idea for the tunable LC lens is to provide the lens-like phase profile, i.e., converging or diverging to the propagating wave. The most common approach is to control the LC director by means of a nonuniform electric field that could be done by the nonhomogeneous cell gap, curved or patterned electrodes, and by some nonuniform alignment. However, all of these approaches deal with complicated fabrication procedure, high power consumption, and poor optical performance [6][7][8][9]. In a different approach, variation of the anchoring energy or pretilt angle has been proposed to fabricate low power consuming LC lenses. However, providing quantized distribution of nonuniform anchoring energy is a real challenge for the community. On the other hand, spatially varying the pretilt angle can be a good alternative to achieve low power consuming tunable LC lenses. The pretilt angle of the LC alignment is an important parameter to define the characteristic of LC devices. Usually, most of the LC devices are based on either planar or vertical alignment that corresponds to the pretilt angle values 0°-10°or 80°-90°. Achieving stable pretilt angles between 10°and 80°is still difficult [10]. In recent years, several LC applications, such as bistable display [11] Recently, Tseng et al. reported LC lenses based on varying pretilt angles fabricated by the stacked alignment (two or more alignment layers) layer [13]. These lenses provide low voltage operations. However, the stacked alignment layer fabrication is rather complicated and imposes certain limitations for the alignment quality and fabrication procedure. Here, we report a tunable LC lens based on the approach of controlling the pretilt angle profile by means of the irradiance doses of a photoalignment (PA) layer. Such a PA layer provides precise control on the pretilt angle over a wide range of the pretilt angles, i.e., 1°-89°, which provides a great potential for applications not only in the tunable LC lens but also for other photonics and display devices.The PA material CPL024 [from Dai-Nippon Ink and Chemicals (DIC)], which is a cross-linking polymer, provides a broad range of pretilt angles (1°-89°) depending on the irradiance doses. The pretilt angle profile for the CPL024 at different irradiance has been studied by making a 10-μm thick-antiparallel LC cell with several distinct areas with different irradiance (Fig. 1). The fabrication pro...

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“…Tunable-focus liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens based on harmonic diffraction Yimin Lou, 1 Linsen Chen, 2 Chinhua Wang, 1,a) We propose and demonstrate a tunable-focus liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens (TLCFZL) based on harmonic diffraction. The physical mechanism of the focus tuning is based on a multi-order diffraction process using a shallow surface relief type harmonic diffractive structure with uniform electrodes which results in significantly reduced fabrication complexity and excellent electro-optic performances.…”

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confidence: 99%

Tunable-focus liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens based on harmonic diffraction

Lou¹,

Chen²,

Wang³

et al. 2012

Applied Physics Letters

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We propose and demonstrate a tunable-focus liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens (TLCFZL) based on harmonic diffraction. The physical mechanism of the focus tuning is based on a multi-order diffraction process using a shallow surface relief type harmonic diffractive structure with uniform electrodes which results in significantly reduced fabrication complexity and excellent electro-optic performances. A rapid fabrication process including imprinting technique is studied, from which a high performance TLCFZL with three switchable focus lengths and high diffraction efficiency (about 70%) is fabricated. Focusing and imaging properties of the TFLCFZL are tested. The highest resolution of the lens reaches 22.6 lp/mm with low operating voltage of less than 7.2 Vrm and response time of ∼200 ms.

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Nonmechanical bifocal zoom telescope

Cited by 42 publications

References 12 publications

A Study of Optical Design on 9× Zoom Ratio by Using a Compensating Liquid Lens

A Study of Optical Design on 9× Zoom Ratio by Using a Compensating Liquid Lens

Low voltage tunable liquid crystal lens

Tunable-focus liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens based on harmonic diffraction

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