Electrically tunable liquid crystal lens with a serpentine electrode design

The design and operational principle of a new electrically tunable gradient index liquid crystal lens are described. The approach is based on linear serpentine electrodes and does not require a semiconductor layer. A preliminary validation is done for a lens with a 2 mm clear aperture, demonstrating 9.5 diopters of optical power and a root-mean-square wavefront error of 0.16 µm. The developed lens is tested with a miniature camera and the image quality improvement is demonstrated experimentally.