Abstract
Conventional liquid microlens arrays are facing bottlenecks in controlling droplet size and shape, and limited aperture ratio. We report a new liquid/solvent approach to overcome these obstacles for making uniform droplet array and achieving approximately 90% aperture ratio. The droplets are very stable due to the pinning effect of the polymer walls and substrate surfaces. Using the fabricated droplet array, we demonstrate a tunable-focus microlens array based on dielectrophoretic effect. The microlens array exhibits a large dynamic range and fast response time (tens of milliseconds). Besides liquid microlens arrays, this fabrication method also opens a new door for making other tunable photonic devices.
Highlights
IntroductionAdaptive focus lenses based on liquid [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11], liquid crystal [12,13,14], polymer [15], and elastic membrane [16,17,18,19] have been studied extensively attempting for applications in imaging, optoelectronic, and biometrical devices
Using the fabricated droplet array, we demonstrate a tunable-focus microlens array based on dielectrophoretic effect
We have developed a method for fabricating liquid droplet array and dielectrophoretic microlens array
Summary
Adaptive focus lenses based on liquid [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11], liquid crystal [12,13,14], polymer [15], and elastic membrane [16,17,18,19] have been studied extensively attempting for applications in imaging, optoelectronic, and biometrical devices. It is quite challenging to disperse a liquid into droplet array This is because several factors have to be considered simultaneously, e.g., the position of each droplet, droplet size, droplet shape, droplet uniformity, and aperture ratio of the whole array. To overcome these obstacles, here we report a novel approach for fabricating liquid droplet array. Our approach includes three steps: 1) forming a cavity array, 2) filling the cavity with liquid and solvent, and 3) evaporating the solvent. Using this approach, various droplet arrays can be developed . To illustrate the fabrication procedures, we prepared a dielectrophoretic microlens array and characterized its imaging properties
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