Tim Wilkinson, featured ILCC liquid crystal artist, March 2010


Tim Wilkinson is a graduate of Canterbury University, New Zealand. He is currently a Reader in Photonic Engineering in the Engineering Department of Cambridge University and member of the CMMPE group. He has been working in the field of photonics, holographic technology and devices for over 19 years. This includes new liquid crystal device structures based on arrays of vertically grown multiwall carbon nanotubes and graded refractive index structures which have applications such as switchable lenslet arrays and 3D displays/sensors.



Jury comment: this picture has been chosen because it shows directly an exciting application of liquid crystals
The picture is a microlens array under crossed polarizers. The array is designed for a 3 colour LC laser and has a 50µm lenslet pitch. The dark area is an aluminium electrode and the apertures are the lenslets 20µm thick BLO48 nematic LC.