Design and fabrication of a mechanically laminated liquid crystal film compound eye lens based on developable surfaces and parallel photoalignment.

The bionic compound eye lens shows great promise for compact machine vision and micro-drone navigation systems, yet current fabrication methods rely on rigid materials that are difficult to bend, limiting their use on non-planar surfaces. This work leverages the lightweight, ultra-thin, transparent, and flexible nature of liquid crystal films to enable the fabrication of mechanically laminated compound eye lenses. A design strategy for arranging liquid crystal film microlens arrays on developable surfaces is introduced and demonstrated using the lateral surface of a frustum. Furthermore, a parallel patterning photoalignment method is proposed that allows such microlens arrays to be fabricated with diameters up to 50 mm. The resulting microlens array is then combined with a circular polarizer and optically clear adhesive (OCA) to form a composite film, which is closely attached to a 3D-printed skeleton, yielding a liquid crystal film compound eye lens with a principal optical axis variation range of 36°. Imaging experiments successfully conducted on the fabricated lens confirm its functionality, paving the way for realizing highly integrated compound eye lens imaging systems.