Design and fabrication of liquid crystal wavefront corrector based on mask lithography

Liquid crystal wavefront correctors (LCWFCs) exhibit high development cost and customization difficulties due to being fabricated based on the process technology of liquid crystal displays. To achieve specialized and low-cost development of LCWFCs, a liquid crystal wavefront corrector is fabricated by using the mask lithography method. Firstly, a 91 -pixel passive liquid crystal driving electrode is designed and prepared based on the mask lithography technology and then, packaged as a liquid crystal optical correction unit. A circuit board for driver connection is designed and prepared to connect the optical correction unit and the driving circuit board. Next, the response characteristics of the LCWFC are tested, and the results show that the phase modulation is 5.5 lambda, and the response time is 224 ms. Finally, the spherical waves are obtained and the static tilt aberrations are corrected based on Zygo interferometer. The results show that the LCWFC can generate positive and negative defocused wavefronts. Further, after correction of the horizontal tilt aberration, the coefficient of the first term of the Zernike polynomials is decreased from 1.18 to 0.16. Therefore, the aberration is corrected with the amplitude of 86%. This work may provide new ideas for the development of LCWFCs, and then expanding their application fields and scenarios.