Beam steering and forming in compact electrowetting prism array with separate electrode control

Abstract

Large aperture beam steering in a transmissive and compact device has been an important design objective for various technologies including LIDAR and 3D displays. We propose a new aperture variable beam steering method using an electrowetting prism array. By individually controlling the voltage of electrode, 3-dimensional beam steering is possible because it can manipulate beam steering and forming simultaneously. The total aperture of the prism array can be varied depending on the number of arrays. The operating speed was 25ms and the steering range was ±9.5° in the transverse and longitudinal directions, and ±13.2° in the diagonal direction. The range of optical power was −47.6D to 47.6D. Measurement of optical properties such as the RMS wavefront error as the sum of all aberrations of the prism and the radius of curvature, which is the flatness of the interface, and a demonstration of a 3-dimensional beam steering is also presented.