Defect suppression in liquid crystal filled polymer devices

摘要

Liquid crystal filled polymer structure (LiCFiPS) devices consist of a polymer structure, which performs the desired spatial phase modulation of the incident light, the spaces within which are filled with liquid crystal to permit modulation of this optical function. Potentially, fabrication of this type of device may be carried out at very low cost using established polymer hot rolling or embossing techniques. In previous work on coarse gratings liquid crystal defects have been observed when the alignment direction of the liquid crystal is perpendicular to the grating ruling direction. These give rise to spurious diffraction peaks. The models of this type of device suggest that these defects might be suppressed if the dimensions of the liquid crystal region are small. Measured diffraction patterns show that for devices with smaller liquid crystal region dimensions, diffraction free of spuriae is in fact observed. Being fixed function, such devices might not offer the ultimate versatility of matrix addressed SLM devices; they do however offer electronic control of diffractive optical devices at very low cost.