Lens arrays could feature in miniature lab products of the future

The quest for ever-smaller lab products may have taken a step forwards with the proposal of using lens arrays in place of a single imaging channel in projectors.

Existing projectors use one imaging channel to focus their picture, placing a minimum size on their construction.

However, Marcel Sieler of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena believes that an array of lenses could allow them to become even smaller.

With a high-performance LED providing the light, the multi-channel design can decrease the minimum size of the projector without impeding its luminosity.

Estimates suggest that 45 million projectors are likely to be sold worldwide by 2012; the new findings could help to reduce the physical size of lab products which incorporate image projection in any form.

Back in 2006, researchers at the same facility showed how tilting a mirror along two axes, instead of only allowing rotation through a single plane, could vastly reduce the size and cost of projectors - potentially allowing them to be created at the size of a sugar cube.