High Birefringence Liquid Crystals for Laser Hardening and IR countermeasure

摘要

A fast-switching and scattering-free phase modulator using polymer network liquid crystal (PNLC) is demonstrated at **=l.55 um for laser beam steering application. The strong polymer network anchoring greatly reduces the visco-elastic coefficient of the liquid crystal. As a result, the PNLC response time is improved by -300X, although the threshold voltage is increased by -25X. Computer simulation results agree with experiments well.