Presentation Information
[16p-M_110-1][The 9th Optical Engineering Achievement Award Speech] Development of liquid crystal spatial light modulators for
a wide variety of instruments and their industrial applications
〇Nobuyuki Hashimoto1 (1.Japan Women's Univ.)
Keywords:
Liquid crystal spatial light modulator,Liquid crystal,Liquid crystal optics
During university students, my research thesis was holography and its memory applications. Later, at Citizen Watch, I was assigned to the LCD TV development project and greatly fascinated by the potential of liquid crystals that could be directly driven by CMOS and required only a few volts for half-wave voltage. Then, in 1991, we developed a liquid crystal spatial light modulator with a pixel pitch of 30μm and succeeded in recording and reproducing 3D holograms. By 2000, this related technology was commercialized as a high-order aberration correction device for DVD players, followed by Blu-ray Disc players. At its peak, production exceeded ten million units annually. This marked the first instance of a device capable of sub-nanometer wavefront control being used extensively in consumer products. Subsequent research applied liquid crystal devices to laser processing, laser confocal microscopy, exoplanet exploration, and incoherent digital holography, with some of these leading to commercial products. This presentation reports on the characteristics of liquid crystal devices, their history of research, their applications and prospects.