Universal membrane-based tunable liquid lens design for dynamically correcting spherical aberration over user-defined focal length range

A novel membrane-based tunable liquid aspherical lens design capable of dynamically reducing spherical aberration over certain focal length tuning range is presented. Different from conventional treatment using elastic membrane with uniform thickness, in current case, the membrane's cross-section is designed to be a plano-convex shape with well-defined aspherical contour. A brand new design flow combining optical ray-tracing and mechanical finite element analysis is especially developed, in which through properly selecting the initial focal length and the center membrane thickness with respect to particularly designed figure of merit (FOM), the membrane can be flexibly optimized to achieve dynamic spherical aberration correction capability over the desired focal length range. For proof of concept demonstration, a tunable aspherical lens with clear aperture of 4 mm is designed. Compared with conventional counterpart, after being individually optimized using current design strategy, lenses with distinctly reduced spherical aberration have been successfully achieved over different focal length tuning ranges. Besides, no special refractive index matching between the filling liquid and the membrane is required, making current design more practical in real applications.