A novel concept for piezoelectric actuation of tunable silicone membrane lenses

Abstract:
We present a novel design of a tunable focus lens based on the piezoelectric actuators and a deformable membrane. We uniquely integrated the actuators in perpendicular orientation and used them to displace a movable glass window. With this configuration, the movable glass window primarily deforms the fluid chamber and the membrane to achieve a tunable focal power range of ± 12 dpt. Secondarily, a small footprint of 20x20x2.5 mm3 at a large aperture of 18 mm is achieved. Hence a tunable lens with high aperture, low footprint and high tunable range is developed. We simulated the tunable lens concept in COMSOL Multiphysics(r) and fabricated a prototype for mechanical characterization.