An electrically tunable imaging system with separable focus and zoom functions using composite liquid crystal lenses

We demonstrated an electrically tunable optical image system with separable focus function and zoom function based on three tunable focusing composite liquid crystal (LC) lenses. One LC lens in charge of the focus function helps to maintain the formed image at the same position and the other two LC lenses in charge of zoom function assist to continuously form an image at image sensor with tunable magnification of image size. The detail optical mechanism is investigated and the concept is demonstrated experimentally. The magnifications of the images can be switched continuously for the target in a range between 10 cm and 100 cm. The optical zoom ratio of this system maintains a constant similar to 6.5:1 independent of the object distance. This study provides not only a guideline to design the image system with an electrically optical zoom, but also provide an experimental process to show how to operate the tunable focusing lenses in such an image system. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America