Broadband cholesteric liquid crystal lens for chromatic aberration correction in catadioptric virtual reality optics

A planar and broadband cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) lens is designed, fabricated, and hybridized with a refractive lens to form a catadioptric pancake lens for virtual reality (VR) displays. Due to their opposite optical dispersion behaviors, the chromatic aberration of the assembled pancake lens is dramatically suppressed, as verified by both ray-tracing analysis and experimental results. The demonstrated catadioptric pancake lens has great potential for next-generation VR displays.