Refractive-type varifocal liquid-crystal Fresnel lenses for smart contacts

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 31; no. 10; p. 17027
• Main Authors: Banerjee, Aishwaryadev, Ghosh, Chayanjit, Karkhanis, Mohit U., Deshpande, Adwait, Pourshaban, Erfan, Majumder, Apratim, Kim, Hanseup, Mastrangelo, Carlos H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 08.05.2023
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.489093

We demonstrate the implementation of a low-power, low-profile, varifocal liquid-crystal Fresnel lens stack suitable for tunable imaging in smart contact lenses. The lens stack consists of a high-order refractive-type liquid crystal Fresnel chamber, a voltage-controlled twisted nematic cell, a linear polarizer and a fixed offset lens. The lens stack has an aperture of 4 mm and thickness is ∼980 µm. The varifocal lens requires ∼2.5 V RMS for a maximum optical power change of ∼6.5 D consuming electrical power of ∼2.6 µW. The maximum RMS wavefront aberration error was 0.2 µm and the chromatic aberration was 0.008 D/nm. The average BRISQUE image quality score of the Fresnel lens was 35.23 compared to 57.23 for a curved LC lens of comparable power indicating a superior Fresnel imaging quality.