Thermally tunable-focus lenticular lens using liquid crystal

A thermally tunable focusing lenticular liquid crystal (LC) lens array was fabricated using a polymer LC component, including a polarizer that produces linearly polarized light. The focal length in the proposed structure could be tuned by temperature-adjusted applied voltage to a transparent heater in a lenticular LC lens cell because it alters the birefringence of the LC and varies the difference in refractive index between the LC and the polymer. The results showed that the focal length of the E7 LC used varied continuously with temperature from 5.6 to 8.7 mm from 25 degrees C to 54 degrees C, respectively. The proposed lenticular LC lens has potential use in photonic devices such as biological imaging, phone cameras, and optical sensors. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America