A high-resolution micro-circular-polarization-analyzer array for real-time active circular polarization imaging

In this paper, a high-resolution micro-circular-polarization-analyzer (MCPA) array is presented and characterized. MCPAs for extracting right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized components of incident light are implemented by fabricating polymerizable-liquid-crystal (PLC) micro-retarders with perpendicular fast axes on top of a 45° laminated linear polarizing film. With sulfonic-dye-1 (SD1) as the PLC photoalignment material, an MCPA feature size as small as 5/Ltm is achieved. In addition, the concept of real-time active circular polarization image sensing and processing with targets illuminated by collimated circularly polarized light is enabled by the MCPA array's on-chip integration with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors.