Recent Advances in Adaptive Liquid Crystal Lenses

An adaptive-focus lens is a device that is capable of tuning its focal length by means of an external stimulus. Numerous techniques for the demonstration of such devices have been reported thus far. Moving beyond traditional solutions, several new approaches have been proposed in recent years based on the use of liquid crystals, which can have a great impact in emerging applications. This work focuses on the recent advances in liquid crystal lenses with diameters larger than 1 mm. Recent demonstrations and their performance characteristics are reviewed, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the reported technologies and identifying the challenges and future prospects in the active research field of adaptive-focus liquid crystal (LC) lenses.