Liquid crystal microlens with tunable-focus over focal plane driven by low-voltage signal

摘要

A liquid crystal (LC) microlens with a new type of electrode pattern is designed. The both bottom and top ITO electrodes of LC microlens are placed face to face, and are separated by glass spacer with the thickness in micron scale, and then LC materials are injected into the cell constructed by them. Because of the two electrodes directly and closely facing the LC layer injected, the design can largely decrease the driving signal voltage for LC lens. The bottom electrode is designed with one round hole pattern. The top electrode is four circle patterns. The diameters of round hole and circle are 500μm and 160μm, respectively. Each circle pattern electrode can be used to focus incident light into different region over the focal plane of LC lens. When the four circle electrodes are driven by different signal at the same time, the focus can be moved off-axis over the focal plane of LC lens, and thus the voltage amplitude can be varied in the range from OV_(rms) to 20V_(rms). So, we realize a LC microlens with tunable-focus over the focal plane of LC lens driven by low-amplitude voltage signal.