Fast Electro-Optic Devices for Next Generation Optical Cross-Connects

摘要

The project was undertaken to construct fast liquid crystal based devices, which would increase the reconfiguration speeds by two or more orders of magnitude. We explored the use of a new class of materials based on smectic liquid crystals, which have been demonstrated to have switching speeds as fast as 15 ns. In our prior work, we had used liquid crystals as switching elements in WDM optical interconnects using the slower nematic liquid crystals with outstanding performance but much slower speeds. The goal of this project was to explore other technologies that could be used to increase the performance of these devices. We found that while ferroelectric liquid crystal provide superior switching speeds, these materials exhibited a stronger temperature dependence which prevented us from using this technology with the desired level of performance in the optical cross-connects. Alternate technologies based on bistable nematic liquid crystals were explored and while these performed better, the fabrication of these devices proved to be more difficult.