Methods And Components For Electrically Driving And Controlling Liquid Crystal Device Using Transformation Light Beam And Tuning Imaging Wavelength

Traditional optical lenses, which are usually fabricated over common optical materials,such as glasses or silicon, have fixed shape and focal length. It has relatively smallapplication range because of limited optical properties. Current research demonstrates thatthe electrically driving and controlling liquid crystal lenses （ECLCMs）, as one of the newtype of optical components, show some special electro-optical properties. Throughchanging the signal voltage applied over the ECLCMs’ electrodes, electric field appliedover the device can be changed effectively, and thus the spatial arrangement of LCmolecules can be varied, and finally the optical properties can easily be shifted by externalelectric fields applied. The typical electrically driving and controlling behaviors of the LCdevice are as follows. The focal length of LC lenses can be tunable with the variance of thealternating signal voltage applied. And when the signal voltage with a tunable amplitudeand intensity is applied over the multiple electrodes at the same time, the focus of theECLCMs can be swingged over focal plane. And by changing the signal voltage applied tomultiple electrodes, the interference filtering behaviors can be controlled electrically, so asto realize high performance hyperspectral imaging with ability of tuning imagingwavelength of incident light.Since the voltage signal can be varied in a relatively large dynamic range, the focallength of LC lenses can also be changed in a relatively large range. So, it will be excellentto control LC lenses by a signal voltage with a wide adjustable range and modulationprecise. Based on the above requirements, a digital voltage control device with a wideadjustable range and high precise output is designed and realized. Its output voltage can bechanged continually from1V_RMSto200V_RMS, and the voltage output precise can be smallto¹0mV_RMS, and the output signal waveform can be generated arbitrarily by waveformsgenerator. Arbitrary waveforms can be downloaded to the arbitrary waveforms generatorvia serial port of PC. Its frequency can be set in a range from1Hz to30KHz, and then thefrequency accuracy is0.01Hz.The designed driving and controlling system has independent16channels, which canbe independently used to control any one of4×4region in LC lenses. So, all parts （16channels） for4×4region are addressablly controlled. Using this device fabricated by us, wecan independently concurrently control the4×4regions of LC lenses. The above propertymeans that the LC lenses has a special adaptive feature correspondent to the variance oftargets and environmental factors, and thus indicate broader applications in imagingdetection field. The research results show that through the LC driving and controlling set-ups, the important functions, such as electrically tunable focal length, electrically swing focus over focal plane, and electrically modulating imaging wavelength, can be realizedeffectively.