68-2: Smart Liquid Crystal Beam Deflector With Laser Ablated Polymer Micro Grating Structure

Abstract

LC beam steering devices are realized using the combination of liquid crystal and polymer micro grating structures. The micro gratings are fabricated by combining two major techniques: laser ablation for a master mold and soft lithography for replicas with the desired optical materials. The LC components demonstrate effective beam deflections with a steering angle of 2.6° for both polarized monochromatic light (deflection efficiency >40%) and unpolarized white light beam (deflection efficiency >30%).

Active Optical Beam Shaping Based on Liquid Crystals and Polymer Micro-Structures

“…Other methods adopt nematic LCs rather than LCPs to avoid the complex device architecture and reduce the cost [55][56][57][58][59][60]. A nematic LC device with micro lens array is schematically shown in Figure 2.…”