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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Fast-Response Liquid Crystals For Photonic And Display Applications, Jie Sun
Fast-Response Liquid Crystals For Photonic And Display Applications, Jie Sun
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Liquid crystal devices are attractive for many applications such as information displays, spatial light modulators and adaptive optics, because their optical properties are electrically tunable. However, response time of liquid crystal devices is a serious concern for many applications especially for those who require large phase modulation (≥2π). This is because a thick LC layer is usually needed to achieve a large phase shift while the response time of a nematic LC is highly determined by the cell gap.
Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Photonic Crystal Lasers And Photonic Devices, Ying Zhou
Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Photonic Crystal Lasers And Photonic Devices, Ying Zhou
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation discusses cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) and polymers based photonic devices including one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystal lasers and broadband circular polarizers. CLCs showing unique self-organized chiral structures have been widely used in bistable displays, flexible displays, and reflectors. However, the photonic band gap they exhibit opens a new way for generating laser light at the photonic band edge (PBE) or inside the band gap. When doped with an emissive laser dye, cholesteric liquid crystals provide distributed feedback so that mirrorless lasing is hence possible. Due to the limited surface anchoring, the thickness of gain medium and feedback length is …
Fast Response Liquid Crystal Devices, Yung-Hsun Wu
Fast Response Liquid Crystal Devices, Yung-Hsun Wu
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Liquid crystal (LC) has been widely used for displays, spatial light modulators, variable optical attenuators (VOAs) and other tunable photonic devices. The response time of these devices is mainly determined by the employed liquid crystal material. How to obtain fast response for the LC devices is a fundamentally important and technically challenging task. In this dissertation, we investigate several methods to improve liquid crystal response time, for examples, using dual-frequency liquid crystals, polymer stabilized liquid crystals, and sheared polymer network liquid crystals. We discover a new class of material, denoted as sheared polymer network liquid crystal (SPNLC) which exhibits a …
Refractive Indices Of Liquid Crystals And Their Applications In Display And Photonic Devices, Jun Li
Refractive Indices Of Liquid Crystals And Their Applications In Display And Photonic Devices, Jun Li
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Liquid crystals (LCs) are important materials for flat panel display and photonic devices. Most LC devices use electrical field-, magnetic field-, or temperature-induced refractive index change to modulate the incident light. Molecular constituents, wavelength, and temperature are the three primary factors determining the liquid crystal refractive indices: ne and no for the extraordinary and ordinary rays, respectively. In this dissertation, we derive several physical models for describing the wavelength and temperature effects on liquid crystal refractive indices, average refractive index, and birefringence. Based on these models, we develop some high temperature gradient refractive index LC mixtures for photonic applications, such …