Movable electrowetting optofluidic lens for optical axial scanning in microscopy

Abstract

Optical axial scanning is essential process to obtain 3D information of biological specimens. To realize optical axial scanning without moving, the tunable lens is a solution. However, the conventional tunable lenses usually induce non-uniform magnification and resolution issues. In this paper, we report a movable electrowetting optofluidic lens. Unlike the conventional tunable lens, our proposed optofluidic lens has two liquid-liquid (L-L) interfaces, which can move in the cell by an external voltage. The object distance and image distance are adjusted by shifting the L-L interface position. Therefore, the proposed lens can realize optical axial scanning with uniform magnification and resolution in microscopy. To prove the concept, we fabricate an optofluidic lens and use it in optical axial scanning. The scanning distance is more than 1 mm with uniform magnification and good imaging quality. Widespread application of such a new adaptive zoom lens is foreseeable.