An electro-active polymer based lens module for dynamically varying focal system

Abstract

We demonstrate a polymer-based active-lens module allowing a dynamic focus controllable optical system with a wide tunable range. The active-lens module is composed of parallelized two active-lenses with a convex and a concave shaped hemispherical lens structure, respectively. Under operation with dynamic input voltage signals, each active-lens produces translational movement bi-directionally responding to a hybrid driving force that is a combination of an electro-active response of a thin dielectric elastomer membrane and an electro-static attraction force. Since the proposed active lens module widely modulates a gap-distance between lens-elements, an optical system based on the active-lens module provides widely-variable focusing for selective imaging of objects in arbitrary position.