Selected Topics in Novel Optical Design

Abstract

This dissertation discusses various selected topics in novel optical design and engineering, including photographic fisheye lens design for 35mm format cameras, miniature camera lens design with a freeform surface, applications and optical performance consideration of liquid lenses. For the topic of photographic fisheye lens design for 35mm format cameras, a state-of-art large aperture (F/2.8 – F/3.5) zoom fisheye lens for 35mm DSLR cameras is presented with optical performance evaluation. The design philosophy and aberration control are explained in detail, along with the background of fisheye lenses in general. Other than state-of-art optical systems, novel methods to improve tolerance performance of current designs are also desired. For the topic of miniature camera lens design, the author introduced a new freeform surface that has been never used in imaging system based on pedal curve to the ellipse. Via two different sets of tolerance performance comparison with conventional aspherical surfaces, the newly presented freeform surface is proved to efficiently desensitize the current miniature camera designs without a significant change in structure. In the last topic, author explain the use of liquid lenses in detail. As a recently developed novel optical component, liquid lenses introduce new degrees of freedoms for optical designers, along with new design problems. For this topic, the author will explain various potential applications of liquid lenses. The optical performance of a motion-free 3D microscope objective based on liquid lens is analyzed in both simulation and experiment set up. In the end, the author will introduce a novel method to correct chromatic aberration of a liquid lens setup, which has been a challenge for previous applications with liquid lenses.