ADJUSTABLE FOCAL LENGTH ILLUMINATOR FOR A DISPLAY PANEL

• Main Authors: Amirsolaimani, Babak, Diorio, Nicholas John, He, Sihui, Landig, Renate Eva Klementine, Shi, Zhimin, Greif, Daniel Guenther, Feng, Xiayu, Yang, Yang, Calafiore, Giuseppe, Malhotra, Tanya, Peng, Fenglin, Chi, Wanli, Ouderkirk, Andrew John, Gollier, Jacques, Parsons, Maxwell
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 08.06.2023
• Subjects: BLASTING; DEVICES OR ARRANGEMENTS, THE OPTICAL OPERATION OF WHICH ISMODIFIED BY CHANGING THE OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF THE MEDIUM OF THEDEVICES OR ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE CONTROL OF THE INTENSITY,COLOUR, PHASE, POLARISATION OR DIRECTION OF LIGHT, e.g.SWITCHING, GATING, MODULATING OR DEMODULATING; FREQUENCY-CHANGING; FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OR DETAILS OF LIGHTING DEVICES OR SYSTEMSTHEREOF; HEATING; LIGHTING; MECHANICAL ENGINEERING; NON-LINEAR OPTICS; OPTICAL ANALOGUE/DIGITAL CONVERTERS; OPTICAL LOGIC ELEMENTS; OPTICS; PHYSICS; STRUCTURAL COMBINATIONS OF LIGHTING DEVICES WITH OTHERARTICLES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; TECHNIQUES OR PROCEDURES FOR THE OPERATION THEREOF; WEAPONS

An illuminator for a display panel includes a slab of transparent material for propagating illuminating light between outer surfaces of the slab, an out-coupler supported by the slab for out-coupling portions of the illuminating light along one of the outer surfaces of the slab, and a tunable microlens array for forming an array of light spots from the out-coupled illuminating light portions downstream of the focusing element for illuminating pixels of the display panel. The array of light spots may be repeated at a distance from the tunable microlens array due to Talbot effect. The display panel may be illuminated in a color-sequential manner, and the tunable microlens array may be used to adjust the focal plane position for each color channel individually.