Is it possible to make a tunable fluidic lens that can provide a pure cylindrical correction? The majority of tunable fluidic lenses used in zoom systems or adaptive optics applications primarily compensate for defocus and/or spherical aberration. However, the development of a tunable lens that can purely compensate for astigmatism (or cylinder) without also introducing defocus or higher order monochromatic aberrations has remained elusive. Building on the dog-bone shaped tunable lens developed by Stürmer et al. (2014), Ozgur and coauthors use finite element analysis to systematically optimize parameters for a tunable fluidic lens that nearly eliminates defocus when introducing astigmatism. The team fabricated a lens using these parameters and measured its optical performance using a wavefront sensor. Because the corners of the dog-bone design divert stresses away from the center of the lens, thereby enabling a uniform stress distribution at its center, the lens can provide nearly a pure cylindrical correction over a very large range (±5 Diopters). While additional refinements can be made (including the number of variables and materials that can be examined), the analysis and fabrication methods presented by the authors are promising for further developing a tunable fluidic lens that can be incorporated into ophthalmic instruments to purely correct for defocus and astigmatism.

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