Rapid fabrication of an electrically switchable liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens

Abstract

Based on a nanoimprint technique, a new method is proposed for the rapid fabrication of an electrically switchable liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens (SLCFZL). The flow chart of the proposed fabrication method for a SLCFZL is given and a binary SLCFZL is experimentally demonstrated using the proposed method. The diffraction efficiency of the SLCFZL is continuously tunable through an external electric field, and the driving voltage is relatively low (<15 Vrms). The measured maximal diffraction efficiency reaches ∼35% for a linearly polarized light, which is close to the theoretical value of 40.5%. The focusing and imaging properties of the SLCFZL are also experimentally tested. © 2010 Optical Society of America.