Apr 18 2006
光学科学家在The University of Arizonaand the佐治亚理工学院已经开发了新的可切换，平坦的液晶衍射透镜，可以适应性地改变其聚焦功率。
And it’s great news for anyone with imperfect vision, for it opens the wayfor next-generation “smart” eyeglasses—glasses with built-in automatic focus.
例如，在可预见的将来，您不会更改处方眼镜 - 您的眼睛医生只会将新处方调整为您已经拥有的规格。
您甚至可以对眼镜进行编程，以比20-20的视觉更好。
"Right now, in our prototype, you switch the lenses on or off to change focus,” said Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers in UA’s College of Optical Sciences and professor of optical sciences, materials science and engineering. “But ultimately this will act just like your automatic camera: Eyeglass lenses will know where to focus just like your auto-focusing camera does.”
Peyghambarian是该团队的一部分，该团队在2001年根据大学与私营企业之间达成协议，开始开发焦点变化的镜头。UA从作品到约翰逊和约翰逊开发公司的三项专利许可，该公司赞助了这项研究。此后，一家名为Pixel Optics的公司从Johnson和Johnson购买了专利许可证，以将创新技术商业化。
佐治亚理工学院现在的十位UA科学家和两位同事正在本周在美国国家科学院网站论文集http：//www.pnas在线发表有关可开关的对焦镜头的第一篇科学论文。亚博老虎机网登录org/current/shtml。
"It’s great to see our new concept materialize and be validated after all these years of continuous efforts,” said Bernard Kippelen. Kippelen, who helped start the project when he was at the UA, is now a professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at Georgia Tech.
The novel lenses focus electroactively, said Guoqiang Li, UA optical sciences assistant research professor and lead author on the scientific paper.
They are basically two pieces of flat glass spaced five microns apart. Five microns is an incredibly small space—roughly one-twentieth the diameter of a human hair. The space is filled with liquid crystal—the same kind of stuff in your laptop’s liquid crystal display.
扁平玻璃涂有更薄的层（十二微米）氧化锡或ITO，这是透明电极。与由铝或金制成的电极不同，ITO传输了击中它的大部分光。
The transparent electrodes are patterned in a circular array over the area of the lens. The circular pattern is created through photolithography, an extremely precise technique that processes with light and chemicals.
Applying less than two volts to the circuit changes the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules, and that changes the optical path length through the lens. It takes only about 1.8 volts to change the index of refraction so that light refocuses, Peyghambarian and Li explained. The result is a flat piece of glass that acts like a lens.
The scientists first tested the imaging properties of the lens on a model human eye, then built prototype eyeglasses that real humans tested. The clinical results agreed with the model eye test.
他们的测试表明，当眼镜被关闭并在打开时启用特写视觉时，远距离视觉不会受到损害。
他们在PNAS文章中报道说：“我们已经证明了具有高衍射效率，高质量，快速响应时间和有限的性能的可切换液晶衍射镜头。- 长老会使用的焦点眼镜镜片。”
据估计，45岁以上世界人口中有93％的人口称为“长老会”，其中老化的人的眼镜镜会失去灵活性，因此，其从远处转移到近物体的能力。
长老会将是第一个从UA研究中受益的人。
Electroactively focusing eyeglasses will revolutionize the $50 billion worldwide vision care industry, backers said at the outset of the UA research project.
科学家预测，他们创建最先进的液晶衍射镜头的主要步骤将在视力护理之外采用应用。例如，具有可开关镜头元素的工具在牙科中很有价值。
"People don’t often recognize that university scientists make prototypes,” Peyghambarin said. “People think of us as just generating science papers. But when we actually make something like this, in house, people begin to realize we have real expertise that’s applicable to everyday problems.”
In addition to Li and Peyghambarian, UA optical scientists who collaborated in the research are David L. Mathine, Pouria Valley, Pekka Ayras, M. S. Giridhar, Gregory Williby, James Schwiegerling (who also is on the faculty in UA’s department of ophthalmology and vision sciences), Gerald R. Meredith, and Seppo Honkanen. Bernard Kippelen and Joshua N. Haddock of the Georgia Institute Technology also collaborated.
http://www.gatech.edu