Liquid crystal Fresnel zone lens based on single-side patterned photoalignment layer

In this article we disclose a method to fabricate liquid crystals (LC) Fresnel zone lens (FZL) with high efficiency. The LCFZL based on patterned planar aligned regions has been prepared by means of two-step photoalignment technique. The proposed binary-phase LCFZL manifests 39% diffraction efficiency at the focal point which is close to the theoretical limit 41%. Moreover, because of lower driving voltage and faster response time these elements could find application in many modern devices such as 2D/3D switchable display, see-through display and etc. © 2014 Society for Information Display