Developing a novel electro-optic scanner for potential micro display and head-mounted display application

Abstract

Light beam deflectors and scanners have great potential in displays and microscopy for industrial and medical applications. A liquid crystal (LC) material that responds to external stimuli is a promising candidate for such applications. The goal of the proposed work is to create a miniature light scanning device without any moving parts using integrated electro-optic(EO) LC material. The design is based on changing the propagation direction of a light beam when it is incident to an electro-optic medium with a voltage-controlled index of refraction. The current design consists of two horizontal LC cell cascaded prisms (active Prism I and II) for horizontal beam deflection and a vertical prism (passive) at the end of the horizontal stage for vertical beam deflection. In the present work, a mathematical model and simulation study is conducted on the proposed design to achieve 2D deflection of the beam (λ=632 nm). The optimized prism or apex angle of active prisms I and II are 63 and 56.7 respectively, whereas the prism angle of the passive prism is 37.5. With an incident beam angle (θ1) of 9 at the entry of prism I, maximum horizontal deflection of >36 and maximum vertical deflection of >13 is achieved through theoretical and simulation study.