An electrically tunable focusing liquid crystal lens with a built-in planar polymeric lens

Abstract

An electrically tunable focusing liquid crystal (LC) lens with a built-in planar polymeric lens with a short focal length (similar to 4.41 to 8.82 cm) is demonstrated. The focal length of the LC lens is contributed by two parts: one is the LC layer and the other is planar polymeric layer. In the image system, the object can be continuously imaged by the LC lens when the object is at the objective distance from 360 to 17 cm as the voltage is switched from 0 to 35 V(rms). The image performance is also demonstrated. The applications are cell phones, and cameras (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3559622]