Application of Liquid Crystal Prism to an Optical Testing System

Abstract

We can easily obtain electrically tunable lens and/or prism as novel optical active devices by usingliquid crystal materials. In this work, we try to use the liquid crystal prmsm as a beam splitter of the lateral shearing unterferometer. A considerably larger size of birefringent prism can be easily obtained by adopting wedge cell structure, and the shearing value; that is, the sensitivity and dynamic range of the measurement system can be electrically controlled. It us demonstrated that this simple system can successfully be applied to measure the thickness of the Al evaporatton thin film.