Focus tunable mirrors made by ionic polymer-metal composite

Abstract

In order to meet modern requirement, electronic products are made smaller and thinner. We used deformable mirrors (DMs) in optical systems that can make camera modules thinner and lighter in electronic products. An Ionic-Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) plays the critical role in our design of deformable mirrors. It has good bending feature and can be driven by low voltage (usually less than 5 volts). Other technologies such as liquid lenses, MEMS deformable mirrors, and liquid crystal lens, all need higher voltage to reach similar optical power of IPMC. After fabrication of IPMC deformable mirrors, we used PDMS on one surface to improve the surface roughness before reflective metal is deposited. Key characteristics of IPMC deformable mirror are demonstrated in the paper. By coating a silver layer on the smoothed IPMC surface, the reflection is up to 90%. From simulation results, the zoom ratio of this module can be expected 1.8 times. Experimentally, the deformable mirror can be changed from flat to 65 diopters (m^-1) by only 3 volts. In this paper, we demonstrated a reflective optical zoom module with three mirrors and two deformable mirrors.