Abstract
This paper reports a novel design of an electrically tunable asymmetrical liquid lens that can deflects optical beam by controlling the lens curvature through driving voltages, which can be integrated with axicon prisms for Optical coherent tomography (OCT) application. Conventionally, clinical verification of cancer tumors routinely depends on biopsying a small piece of tissues for microscopy investigation, however, this is not only a invasive process but also confronted with some risks of the taken tissues containing no cancer cells. To improve the accuracy of diagnosis and reduce patient burden on invasive biopsy, low-invasive OCT system has been proposed to replace the traditionally way in cancer diagnosis. Currently most of the OCT systems employing rotational or vibrational solid lens incorporated with prism system for obtaining three dimensional scanning of surrounding tissues for diagnosis, however, the scanning speed and the convenience to use the system in a curved vessel is greatly limited by the solid mechanism design. For this purpose, we propose the application of a morphology tunable liquid lens integrated with an axicon prism to circumvent the aforementioned problems. This abstract reports the preliminary result of the manipulation of the liquid lens for the basic functions of light beam deflecting/scanning under various electrical energy applications on one side of the lens. The property of the lens for light deflection can be accomplished using non-uniform driving voltages on different electrodes to manipulate the surface morphology of a hemi-spherical liquid lens into a ramp-shaped lens (RSL). A spot light shift of 0.9 cm (scanning angle of 4.76°) on a paper screen by actuating a 500 μm liquid lens at 109.7 volts and 5KHz on one electrode of the six was successfully demonstrated, while the lens one-side contact angle varied from 85° to 65° accordingly. As shown before we demonstrating the functionality of the focal length charging and the laser beam deflecting. The scanning speed and focused spot can approach 10k Hz and 150μm, respectively, which are suitable for OCT application.