Multi-curved variable-focus liquid lens

Abstract

We demonstrate a multi-curved liquid lens with movable liquid–liquid(L–L)​ interface, which has a wide range of focal length. Due to movable L–L interface, the proposed lens can also be used as a single lens to achieve zoom function. The movement of the L–L interface can be achieved by controlling the flow of the liquid, which in turn changes the object distance and image distance to achieve the desired magnification. We fabricated a prototype based on this concept. The experimental result shows that when the movement distance of the L–L interface is ∼10 mm, the shortest positive and negative focal lengths of the lens are 9.3 mm and −8 mm, respectively, and the zoom ratio is 1.3×. The proposed multi-curved variable-focus lens simplifies the zoom imaging system, and its widespread applications in imaging systems are predictable.