Achieving high focusing power for a large-aperture liquid crystal lens with novel hole-and-ring electrodes

Aiming to equip commercial camera modules, such as the optical imaging systems with a CMOS sensor module in 3 Mega pixels, an ultra thin liquid crystal lens with designed hole-and-ring electrodes is proposed in this study to achieve high focusing power. The LC lens with proposed electrodes improves the central intensity of electric field which leads to better focusing quality. The overall thickness of the LC lens can be as thin as 1.2 mm and the shortest focal length of the 4 mm-aperture lens occurs at 20 cm under an applied voltage of 30 V at 1 KHz. The inner ring electrode requires only 40% of applied voltage of the external hole electrode. The applied voltages for this internal ring and external hole electrodes can simply be realized by a pre-designed parallel resistance pair and a single voltage source. Experiments are conducted for validation and it shows that the designed LC lens owns good image clearness and contrast at the focal plane. The proposed design reduces the thickness of LC lens and is capable of achieving relative higher focusing power than past studies with lower applied voltage. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America