Large scale arrays of tunable microlenses

Varshney, Atul and Gohil, Smita and Tadavani, Somayeh Khajehpour and Yethiraj, Anand and Bhattacharyaa, S. and Ghosh, Shankar (2013) Large scale arrays of tunable microlenses. Lab on a Chip, 14. pp. 1330-1334. ISSN 1473-0189

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Abstract

We demonstrate a simple and robust method to produce large 2-dimensional and quasi-3-dimensional arrays of tunable liquid microlenses using a time varying external electric field as the only control parameter. With increasing frequency, the shape of the individual lensing elements (~40 μm in diameter) evolves from an oblate (lentil shaped) to a prolate (egg shaped) spheroid, thereby making the focal length a tunable quantity. Moreover, such microlenses can be spatially localized in desired configurations by patterning the electrode. This system has the advantage that it provides a large dynamic range of shape deformation (with a response time of ~30 ms for the whole range of deformation), which is useful in designing adaptive optics.

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