Optical Study of Liquid Crystal Lens Doped with Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes

In this paper, a new kind of electrically controlled liquid crystal lens, which respond in a relatively fast time, is presented. The multiwalled carbon nanotubes are doped into liquid crystal to fabricate the liquid crystal lens. As 0.02 % concentration of multiwalled carbon nanotubes is uniformly distributed in the liquid crystal, the optical features of the liquid crystal lens are obviously improved. The liquid crystal lens with a diameter of 2.0 mm was fabricated with about 0.2 s response time and less than 5 Vrms applied voltage. The focal length can vary from 16 to 510 mm, and the operation voltage changes from 1.0 to 5.5 Vrms. This liquid crystal lens has the very attractive feature of submillisecond response time, which is a much faster response time in comparison with conventional liquid crystal lens. Thus, this kind of liquid crystal lens has high potential for implementation in many practical imaging applications and imaging commercialisation