Polymer deformable mirror for optical auto focusing

Abstract

A low-stress organic polymer membrane is proposed as a deformable mirror that can be incorporated into a cellular phone camera to achieve auto focusing without motor-type moving parts. It is demonstrated that our fabricated device has an optical power of 20 diopters and can switch focus in 14 ms. The surface roughness of the organic membrane is measured around 15 nm, less than γ/20 of the visible light. With curve fitting, we found that the actuated membrane is almost parabolic in shape, which leads to less aberration than spherical surfaces. It is suitable for reflective-optics systems.