Multiplex Control Instrument For Electrically Controlled Liquid-crystal Micro-optical Modules

Traditional optical lenses made of optical materials with constant refractive index and having given structural thickness and surface profile, can realize the typical functions of converging or diverging incident beams through the beam bending effect of lenses. Electrically controlled liquid crystal(LC) microlenses without the variance of the device’s appearance, can achieve the functions above only by applying electrical driving-controlling signals over the LC devices so as to change the spatial electric fields generated between both electrode-plates in LC device, and then adjust the director arrangement of LC materials filled in the microcavity prefabricated, and thus modulate the spatial distribution of LC refractive index. The technology of shifting the LC microlens optical properties only by applying spatial electrical field, has already demonstrates remarkable advantages comparing conventional lenses, and therefore highlights future applications. The physical properties of the spatial electric fields constructed between electrode plates are directly related to the light-field adjusting performances of LC microlenses, for instance, the electric field polarity, adjusting driving-controlling signal frequency or voltage amplitude. In other words, the optical behaviors of LC microlenses will be affected remarkably because the operations mentioned above. Therefore, it is important that an electrically driving-controlling set-up with performances including the output voltage signals with relatively wide variance range and high modulating accuracy and variable waveforms and signal frequency. In this dissertation, a multiplex control instrument for electrically controlled LC micro-optical modules is developed based on the re-designing and re-exploitation of the early simple set-up for driving-controlling LC microlenses. The main researches include: the selection of high efficiency circuit scheme, the design of hardware and software, the performance testing and evaluation of the whole system, the functional measurements of several LC micro-optical devices, and typical imaging detection applications. The main innovations are: designing and producing a multiplex driving and controlling equipments for LC micro-optical modules controlled electrically and avoiding several defects and insufficiency in earlier set-up according to the factors such as scalability of performance and safety and usability.Scalability of performance:(1) enlarging the amplitude range of output voltage signals, and the Pk-Pk voltage value being expanded to ~200V from early ~96V;(2) the signal waveform can be chosen arbitrarily so as to add new waveforms such as the sine wave and the saw-tooth wave and the customized wave into the system, but the early set-up can only effectively provide a square wave output signal;(3) increasing the output channel number from early 8 to current 16 through solving stability problem of parallel output signals.Safety:(1) a single chip amplification program with thermal shutdown function and instead of cascaded amplifier program in early set-up, is adopted so as to be more safer under the condition of the circuits generating a large number of heat energy and thus causing a short;(2) adding several functional modules including a temperature monitoring module, and an alarm module, and a micro-radiators and high efficiency chassis fans into the system for protecting the excessive heat inside the set-ups.Usability:(1) a rotary knob type program for adjusting output signal is selected to replace the early digital control program even though the developed digital control program is easier, because in the situation of rapidly providing continuous output voltage signals to generate spatial electric fields for more efficiently observe optical transformation efficiency, the early digital control program is verbose and even affect the measurements;(2) a large LCD with a touch function is added into the system so as to present a more customer-friendly interface and more simple manipulation and a real-time storage function of customer-parameters avoiding re-arranging electrical parameters after re-starting the instrument.