Adaptive Lens.

Publisher Summary Adaptive or varifocal lenses with variable focusing powers have attracted much attention because of their wide applications in vision care, consumer electronics such as digital cameras, aberration correction, optical interconnects, and three-dimensional biomedical imaging. The focal power of an optical system is usually changed by nonlinear movement of lenses with spherical or cylindrical powers along the optical axis and such a system consists of several lens components. A lot of efforts have been devoted to the research in adaptive lens. Recent advances in this field have been reviewed in this chapter. For liquid crystal lens, refractive and diffractive LC lenses based on discrete electrodes, hole-patterned electrodes, modal control electrode, hybrid alignment, and polymer/LC materials have been discussed in detail. For liquid lenses, lenses based on mechanic pressure, electrowetting effect, dielectric effect, and hydrogel and thermal effect have been reviewed. Examples of applications in vision care, aberration compensation, zoom lens, and optical tweezers have been discussed.