Adjustable liquid aperture to eliminate undesirable light in holographic projection

In this paper, we propose an adjustable liquid aperture to eliminate the undesirable light in a holographic projection. The aperture is based on hydrodynamic actuation. A chamber is formed with a cylindrical tube. A black droplet is filled in the sidewall of the cylinder tube and the outside space is the transparent oil which is immiscible with the black droplet. An ultrathin glass sheet is attached on the bottom substrate of the device and a black shading film is secured to the central area of the glass sheet. By changing the volume of the black droplet, the black droplet will move to the middle or sidewall due to hydrodynamic actuation, so the device can be used as an adjustable aperture. A divergent spherical wave and a solid lens are used to separate the focus planes of the reconstructed image and diffraction beams induced by the liquid crystal on silicon in the holographic projection. Then the aperture is used to eliminate the diffraction beams by adjusting the size of the liquid aperture and the holographic projection does not have undesirable light. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America