Reconfigurable liquid micro-lenses with high positioning accuracy

A new technique to improve the positioning accuracy of liquid droplets in electrowetting-on-dielectric applications is presented. The approach is based on a structured dielectric layer providing defined pinning barriers for the droplet, and allows the reduction of the number of implemented electrodes while preserving the positioning accuracy of the liquid droplet. By use of voltage pulses, the droplet is shifted from one defined position to the next. A tunable and repositionable liquid micro-lens system based on this approach is demonstrated.