High Birefringence Liquid Crystals and Wide-View Electronic Lens

摘要

The main objective of this program is to develop high birefringence liquid crystal (LC) materials and tunable-focus LC lens. A higher birefringence enables a thinner LC layer to be used which results in a faster response time. Low viscosity is always favorable as it helps to reduce the response time. We have developed several new LC compounds and mixtures exhibiting birefringence higher than 0.6. In parallel, we have demonstrated several device configurations for the tunablefocus spherical and cylindrical lenses, and microlens arrays. A flat spherical LC lens with 6-mm aperture and tuning range from infinity to 0.6 m has been demonstrated.