Liquid Optic Deflector

The electrowetting-based optics has attracted a lot of interesting world wide recently. Several researchers have studied a variable focus liquid lens by using elecctrowetting. By tuning the applied voltage, they can change the shape of the liquid and the focal length. Heikenfeld et al. proposed an electrowetting microprism (EMP) and an angle tunable liquid wedge prism. However, the scale of the device mostly is in the order of millimeter and the manufcuring technology is by hand-assembly. As the switching-speed is proportioned to the size of device. It is difficult to assemble as the device's size is smaller than millimeter. It is urgently to develop manufacturing technologies for the micrometer's device to improve the switching-speed. We proposed a liquid optic deflector (LOD), which combined two kinds of liquid in a cell. By using lithography and thin film technologies, we can fabricate the micro scale LOD. The incident light can be deflected by switching the electrode drive voltage of this liquid device. We applied 10 volts to let the water-oil boundary be level, and then applied the electrode drive voltage V
₁
= -60 volts, V
₂
= +60 volts of the liquid device, the tilt direction can be flipped into left direction. By switching the electrode drive voltage V
₁
= +60 volts, V
₂
= -60 volts of the liquid device, the tilt direction can be flipped into right direction, thus leading to an effective light deflection of the liquid prism effect by using tilt prism. We demonstrated liquid based scanners in 1-D scans with discrete scan beam spots. It is showed that the incident light can be deflected by switching the electrode drive voltage of this liquid device. This idea is the key to design of the different light beam scanning angle by using he discrete states of the applied voltage. In the liquid optic arrays experiment, we have use the lithography and thin film processes to make the prototype.