The present disclosure claims the priority to a Chinese patent application with the application number 202110238053.7 and entitled “Optical Element and Optical Module” filed with the China National Intellectual Property Administration on Mar. 4, 2021, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The present disclosure relates to the field of optical technology, in particular, to an optical element and an optical module.
Optical modules are applied in modern products more extensively, such as structure light in electronic equipment. Structured light, by projecting a specific pattern to the surface of the object, and collecting it through the receiving module, calculates the position and depth information of the object according to the variation of the light signal caused by the object, and then restores the entire depth space. The pattern can be designed as stripe form, regular dot matrix form, grid form, speckle form, coding form and so on, or even more complex light patterns. With the development of optical technology, the application range of structure light becomes more extensive, such as face recognition, gesture recognition, projectors, three-dimensional (3D) outline reconstruction, depth measurement, anti-counterfeiting identification, etc. Therefore, the optical module has become the focus of people's research.
An optical module in the related technologies mainly includes a light source, a collimation lens and optical elements, wherein the light beam emitted by the light source is modulated into collimated light by the collimation lens, and after entering the optical elements and diffracting a pattern array of multiple light spots, it is projected onto the object. Multiple sets of lenses are generally required to collimate and diffract the light beam, however, they are prone to deviation during the loading process, which affects the reliability of the light beam propagation; and multiple sets of lenses are prone to failure after assembly or reliability testing, which leads to a high assembly defective rate of optical module; and the combination of multiple sets of lenses takes up larger space, consumes assembly man-hours, and increases production costs.
The present disclosure provides an optical element and an optical module, which can reduce the assembly cost and the difficulty of assembly, and facilitate the miniaturization of the optical module.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure provide an optical element, the optical element may include a diffractive optical element, and a Fresnel lens which is connected to the diffractive optical element, such that the light beam may pass through the diffractive optical element after passing through the Fresnel lens, so as to form a preset pattern.
Optionally, the diffractive optical element may include a transparent substrate, and a diffractive layer disposed on the transparent substrate.
Optionally, a constituent material of the transparent substrate may be glass or resin, and the diffraction layer may be patterned by micro-nano etching or imprinting process.
Optionally, the diffractive layer may be filled with a filling layer covering the diffractive layer, or a cover plate may be provided on the diffractive layer.
Optionally, the Fresnel lens may be disposed on the transparent substrate, or the Fresnel lens may be disposed on the filling layer.
Optionally, the difference value between the refractive index n1 of the diffractive optical element and the refractive index n2 of the filling layer may be: |n1−n2|≥0.2.
Optionally, the material forming the diffractive optical element has a higher refractive index than the material forming the filling layer, or the material forming the diffractive optical element has a lower refractive index than the material forming the filling layer.
Optionally, a transparent conductive layer may be provided on one side of the transparent substrate.
Optionally, the transparent conductive layer may be made by transparent metal oxide or metal doped oxide.
Optionally, the Fresnel lens may include a substrate, and a collimating layer disposed on the substrate, so that the light beam passing through the Fresnel lens are emitted in parallel, wherein the collimating layer is located on the side of the substrate away from the transparent substrate.
Optionally, the structure types of the diffractive layer and the collimating layer may respectively adopt any one of stepped type and continuous type.
Optionally, at least one of an anti-reflective film layer, a wear-resistant layer, or a hydrophobic and oleophobic layer may be provided on the light-transmitting surface of the filling layer or the transparent substrate.
Other embodiments of the present disclosure provide an optical module, which may include any one of the optical elements described above and a light source, wherein the light source may be located at the focal plane of the Fresnel lens of the optical element, and the collimating portion of the Fresnel lens faces towards the light source.
Optionally, the light source in the optical module can be a vertical cavity surface emitting laser or a laser diode.
The embodiments of the present disclosure at least include the following beneficial effects.
The optical element and the optical module provided in the embodiments of the present disclosure connect the diffractive optical element with the Fresnel lens, such that the structural optical element may be formed as an integral body with optical properties of collimation and diffraction at the same time. When processing optical elements, the alignment error between the diffractive optical element and the Fresnel lens depends on the alignment capability between the wafers, wherein its alignment accuracy is much higher than that between lens sets, compared to the traditional mode using lens sets to assemble. In addition, by using the optical elements provided by the embodiments of the present disclosure, only single optical element is needed to be assembled during assembly, such that the assembly efficiency is higher. Compared with the method using discrete collimation lens set and DOE elements, the assembly cost and assembly difficulty can be reduced. In addition, the space occupied by a single optical element is smaller, which is conducive to the miniaturization design of the optical module.
In order to illustrate the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present disclosure more clearly, the drawings used in the embodiments will be briefly introduced below. It should be understood that the following drawings only show some embodiments of the present disclosure, but they should not be regarded as a limitation on the scope, and those of ordinary skilled in the art can also obtain other related drawings based on these drawings without creative work.
Reference numerals: 100-optical element; 110-diffractive optical element; 112-transparent substrate; 114-diffractive layer; 120-Fresnel lens; 122-substrate; 124-collimating layer; 130-filling layer; 140-cover plate; 200-optical module; 210-light source.
In order to make the purposes, technical solutions and advantages of the embodiments of the present disclosure more clearly, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present disclosure will be clearly and completely described below in conjunction with the drawings in the embodiments of the present disclosure. Obviously, the described embodiments are a part of the embodiments of this disclosure, not all of them. Generally, the components of the embodiments of the present disclosure described and illustrated in the drawings herein may be arranged and designed in a variety of different configurations.
Accordingly, the following detailed description of the embodiments of the present disclosure provided in the drawings is not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure, but merely represents selected embodiments of the present disclosure. Based on the embodiments in the present disclosure, all other embodiments obtained by persons of ordinary skill in the art without creative efforts fall within the protection scope of the present disclosure.
It should be noted that similar numerals and letters denote similar items in the following figures, therefore, once an item is defined in one figure, it does not require further definition and explanation in subsequent figures.
In the description of the present disclosure, it should also be noted that, unless otherwise clearly stipulated and limited, the terms “provide” and “connect” should be understood in a broad sense, for example, it can be a fixed connected or a detachable connected, or integrated connected; it can be directly connected or indirectly connected through an intermediary, and it can be the internal communication between two components. Those of ordinary skill in the art can understand the specific meanings of the above terms in the present disclosure in specific situations.
Optical elements are widely used in many scenarios, for example, the whole system of 3D structure light includes a structure light projection module, a camera, and an image acquisition and processing system. Its process is that the projection module emits light beams onto the measured object, the camera captures the three-dimensional light pattern formed on the measured object, and the captured image is processed by the acquisition and processing system to obtain the surface data of the measured object. In this system, when the relative position of the camera and the projection module is fixed, the distortion degree of the light beams projected on the measured object is determined by the depth of the object surface, so a light beam image with depth can be obtained in the captured image.
The projection module is one of the important components of the entire 3D vision; and it is used to emit specially modulated invisible infrared light to the shot object, and the quality of the emitted image is crucial to the overall recognition effect. When the projection module is in use, it needs to emit invisible infrared light through an invisible-infrared-light emission source, the invisible infrared light is calibrated through a collimation lens and the calibrated invisible infrared light passes through the diffractive optical element (DOE) for diffraction to obtain the desired light spot pattern.
In the traditional projection module, the collimation lens and DOE are discrete elements, such that the whole module has problems such as large space occupied, low alignment accuracy, and high assembly cost, which causes great limitations. In the embodiments of the present disclosure, a single optical element is used to simultaneously implement the functions of collimation and diffraction, so as to solve the above problems.
Referring to
Specifically, the diffractive optical element 110 and the Fresnel lens 120 are connected to form an integrated structure, or they are integrally molded in the form of imprinting, etching or laser direct writing on the same substrate, such that the alignment error between the diffractive optical element 110 and the Fresnel lens 120 depends on the alignment capability (in micron-level) between wafers, which is much smaller than the alignment error (in millimeter-level) between elements in the traditional method. By adopting the above method, the overall optical performance of the optical element 100 can be improved.
When using the optical element 100 provided by the embodiment of the present disclosure, the light source is placed at the focal plane of the Fresnel lens 120. A scattered light spot emitted by the light source will be collimated when passing through the Fresnel lens 120 in the optical element 100, and then enter the diffractive optical element 110 in parallel, and the diffractive optical element 110 may diffract the collimated light to form a preset pattern. The preset pattern may be designed into a stripe form, a regular dot matrix form, a grid form, a speckle form, a coding form, etc. according to actual needs, which is not specified in the embodiments of the present disclosure.
By connecting the diffractive optical element 110 with the Fresnel lens 120, the optical element 100 provided in the embodiment of the present disclosure may be formed as an integral body with optical properties of collimation and diffraction at same time. When processing the optical element 100, the alignment error between the diffractive optical element 110 and the Fresnel lens 120 depends on the alignment capability between the wafers, wherein its alignment accuracy is much higher than that between lens sets, compared to the traditional mode using lens sets to assemble. In addition, with the optical element 100 provided in the embodiment of the present disclosure, only single optical element 100 needs to be assembled during assembly, which has a higher assembly efficiency and reduces the assembly cost and assembly difficulty, compared with using discrete collimating lens sets and DOE elements. In addition, with the use of a single optical element 100, less space is occupied, which is beneficial to the miniaturization design of the optical module 200.
As shown in
Specifically, the material of the transparent substrate 112 can be glass or resin, and the diffractive layer 114 can be patterned by adopting micro-nano etching process, such that the laser is diffracted after passing through each diffractive unit to form a specific light intensity distribution, such as generating a dot matrix, or to produce a uniform-light diffuser according to actual needs. The specific pattern of the diffraction unit of the diffractive optical element 110 is determined by the operating wavelength, the dot matrix distribution of the used vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL), and the finally required diffraction pattern distribution. The height of the diffractive optical element 110 is determined by the operating wavelength, the difference in the refractive index of the used two materials, and the number of steps. In addition, the diffractive layer 114 can be formed by nano-imprinting to obtain the required diffractive units.
As shown in
Specifically, as shown in
In order to ensure that the light beam collimated by the Fresnel lens 120 can be diffracted by the diffractive layer 114 to form the desired pattern, it is necessary that the difference value between the refractive index n1 of the diffractive optical element 110 and the refractive index n2 of the filling layer 130 may be: |n1−n2|≥0.2.
Specifically, the material forming the diffractive optical element 110 may have a relatively higher refractive index, and the material forming the filling layer 130 may have a relatively lower refractive index. The material forming the diffractive optical element 110 also may have a relatively lower refractive index, and the material forming the filling layer 130 has a relatively higher refractive index. It is not specified in the embodiment of the present disclosure. When |n1−n2|≥0.2, both the diffraction effect and the preset pattern obtained will be better.
It should be noted that different refractive indices are used to ensure the normal generation of diffraction, if materials with the same refractive index are used, it can be considered that a same structure is formed by the filling layer 130 and the diffractive layer 114 and there is no diffractive layer 114 anymore. Therefore, the refractive indices of the filling layer 130 and the diffractive optical element 110 need to be different. In addition, when there is no filling layer 130, the diffractive optical element 110 and the air also have different refractive indices, which can also ensure the normal generation of the desired pattern.
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Specifically,
In an optional embodiment of the present disclosure, one side of the transparent substrate 112 may be provided with a transparent conductive layer.
Specifically, the transparent conductive layer can be made of transparent metal oxide or metal doped oxide, such as indium tin oxide, zinc oxide, tin oxide, indium-doped tin oxide, tin-doped gallium trioxide, tin-doped silver indium oxide, indium tin oxide, zinc-doped indium trioxide, antimony-doped tin dioxide, aluminum-doped zinc oxide, etc. When the method shown in
As shown in
Specifically, the Fresnel lens 120 can be molded by imprinting, etching or laser direct writing on the transparent substrate 112. When the above-mentioned forms are used, the substrate 122 and the transparent substrate 112 can be regarded as the same feature. In addition, imprinting glue can also be coated on the transparent substrate 112 and the Fresnel lens 120 is imprinted on the surface of the imprinting glue, so that the connection between the Fresnel lens 120 and the transparent substrate 112 can be formed. When adopting imprinting molding, the required master mask can be prepared by etching or laser direct writing, performing the imprinting by the master mask is beneficial to reduce production costs, facilitates mass production and improves production efficiency. In addition, the light beams passing through Fresnel lens 120 are emitted in parallel, which specifically means that the emitted light beams are parallel to each other. Moreover, the emitted light beams and the plane of the transparent substrate 112 are perpendicular to each other, so as to ensure effective collimation of the light beams.
In an optional embodiment of the present disclosure, the structure types of the diffractive layer 114 and the collimating layer 124 may respectively adopt any one of stepped type and continuous type.
Specifically, the diffractive layer 114 of the diffractive optical element 110 may include a diffractive unit. The individuals forming the diffractive unit may adopt a stepped type or a continuous type, wherein the stepped structure of the diffractive layer 114 may be a stepped structure such as two steps, four steps or eight steps and so on. Similarly, the collimating layer 124 of the Fresnel lens 120 may also be in the stepped type (as shown in
In an optional embodiment of the present disclosure, the light-transmitting surface of the transparent substrate 112 or the filling layer 130 may be provided with at least one of anti-reflective film layer, wear-resistant layer, or hydrophobic and oleophobic (Anti-fingerprint) layer. In this way, when an anti-reflective film layer is disposed on the light-transmitting surface of the transparent substrate 112 or the filling layer 130, the transmittance of the light beam can be improved, thereby increasing the effective utilization rate of the light beam. In addition, in an optional embodiment of the present disclosure, a wear-resistant layer can also be provided on the light-emitting surface of the transparent substrate 112 or the filling layer 130 to ensure the stability of the optical element 100 during assembly or operation, and to reduce the chance that light propagation is affected by surface wear. Similarly, a hydrophobic and oleophobic layer can also be provided according to actual needs, so as to improve the anti-fingerprint ability and ensure that the light-transmitting surface of the transparent substrate 112 or the filling layer 130 remains clean and bright.
As shown in
Specifically, the light source 210 in the optical module 200 can be a vertical cavity surface emitting laser or a laser diode (LD), wherein the vertical cavity surface emitting laser has the advantages of small size, circular output light spot, single longitudinal mode output, small threshold current, and low price, and it is easy to integrate into a large-area array which is conducive to the diversity emission modes of the light beams. Arranging the light source 210 at the focal plane of the Fresnel lens 120 is beneficial to collimate and calibrate the light beam better, so as to ensure the quality of the formed preset pattern.
The optical module 200 of the present disclosure is of a simple structure, only includes the light source 210 and the optical element 100. It does not need to add other collimating lenses, and has lower assembly cost compared with the traditional optical module 200. Moreover, the optical element 100 may combine functions of collimation and diffraction, and the overall size can be controlled within 1 mm, which is beneficial to the miniaturization of the optical module 200.
What is shown in
As shown in
The above descriptions are only some preferred embodiments of the present disclosure, and are not intended to limit the present disclosure. For those of ordinary skilled in the art, there may be various modifications and changes in the present disclosure. Any modifications, equivalent replacements, improvements made within the spirit and principles of the present disclosure shall be included within the protection scope of the present disclosure.
The present disclosure provides an optical element and an optical module, the optical element includes a diffractive optical element, and a Fresnel lens connected to the diffractive optical element, so that the light beam passing through the diffractive optical element through the Fresnel lens forms a preset pattern. The assembly cost can be reduced, and it is beneficial to the miniaturization of the optical module.
In addition, it can be understood that the optical elements and optical modules of the present disclosure are reproducible and can be used in various industrial applications. For example, the optical element and optical module of the present disclosure can be used in the field of optical technology.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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202110238053.7 | Mar 2021 | CN | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/CN2021/137464 | 12/13/2021 | WO |