Hydrogel-actuated tunable-focus microlens arrays mimicking compound eyes

Author

Zhu, D. ; Li, C. ; Zeng, X. ; Jiang, H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

21-25 June 2009

Firstpage

2302

Lastpage

2305

Abstract

Inspired by the structure of natural compound eyes, a liquid tunable-focus microlens array omnidirectionally arranged on a transparent hemispherical dome is demonstrated. Benefiting from the dome structure, this microlens array exceeds traditional planar ones with wide field of view (FOV). Each microlens in this microlens array was formed by a curved water-oil meniscus. The focal length of the microlenses could be individually tuned by a thermo-responsive hydrogel microactuator. Planar and hemispherical microlens arrays were tested and the focal length of the hemispherical microlens array varied from 3 mm to 32 mm. Focused images from the microlens arrays were recorded by a CCD-coupled stereoscope.

Keywords

charge-coupled devices; eye; hydrogels; microactuators; microlenses; optical arrays; optical design techniques; stereo image processing; visual perception; CCD coupled stereoscope; compound eyes; curved water-oil meniscus; dome structure; hemispherical microlens array; hydrogel actuated tunable focus microlens arrays; liquid tunable focus microlens array; planar microlens array; thermo responsive hydrogel microactuator; Apertures; Eyes; Focusing; Lenses; Microactuators; Microoptics; Optical microscopy; Spatial resolution; Temperature; Testing; Compound eyes; field of view; spherical structure; thermo-responsive hydrogel; tunable-focus microlens array; water-oil meniscus;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference, 2009. TRANSDUCERS 2009. International

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4190-7

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4193-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SENSOR.2009.5285896

Filename

5285896