Abstract

Polymer microlens arrays with hermaphroditic focusing behaviors are demonstrated. Each microlens in an arrays exhibits either converging or diverging focus, depending on the polarization direction of the incident light. A polymer film with patterned microlens arrays is flexible, lightweight, and ultrathin (∼50 µm). Details of the lens structure, device fabrication, and lens performance are described.

© 2005 Optical Society of America

Hermaphroditic liquid-crystal microlens

Hongwen Ren, Janet R. Wu, Yun-Hsing Fan, Yi-Hsin Lin, and Shin-Tson Wu
Opt. Lett. 30(4) 376-378 (2005)

Liquid-crystal microlens arrays using patterned polymer networks

Hongwen Ren, Yun-Hsing Fan, and Shin-Tson Wu
Opt. Lett. 29(14) 1608-1610 (2004)

Electrically controllable microlens array fabricated by anisotropic phase separation from liquid-crystal and polymer composite materials

Hee-Su Ji, Jae-Hoon Kim, and Satyendra Kumar
Opt. Lett. 28(13) 1147-1149 (2003)

Polarization-independent and fast tunable microlens array based on blue phase liquid crystals

Shih-Hung Lin, Lin-Song Huang, Chi-Huang Lin, and Chie-Tong Kuo
Opt. Express 22(1) 925-930 (2014)

Switchable focus using a polymeric lenticular microlens array and a polarization rotator

Hongwen Ren, Su Xu, Yifan Liu, and Shin-Tson Wu
Opt. Express 21(7) 7916-7925 (2013)