Active Optical Components are used to manipulate light through a variety of electrical methods, including adaptive reflection, variable diffusion, or tunable focusing. Active Optical Components are ideal for a wide variety life sciences, industrial, or research applications including for testing, illumination systems, wavefront manipulation, or microscopy. Active optics can also be used to replace complex optical systems with more compact, efficient alternatives, which can help reduce system size or remove the need for multiple systems or additional components.

Edmund Optics offers a wide variety of Active Optical Components, including liquid lenses, variable diffusers, or laser speckle reducers, in addition to adaptive optics such as deformable mirrors. Focus-tunable lenses are liquid lenses that utilize a control current to adjust focus, removing the need for multi-lens focus or zoom systems. Adaptive optics, including deformable mirrors, are used to manipulate the wavefront in order to improve the quality of an optical system.