Circularly polarized luminescence from an organoterbium emitter embedded in a chiral polymer

Kristina Bjorknas; Peter Raynes; Sandra Gilmour; Victor Christou; Kai Look

doi:10.1117/12.472990

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24 June 2002 Circularly polarized luminescence from an organoterbium emitter embedded in a chiral polymer

Kristina Bjorknas, Peter Raynes, Sandra Gilmour, Victor Christou, Kai Look

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Proceedings Volume 4806, Complex Mediums III: Beyond Linear Isotropic Dielectrics; (2002) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.472990
Event: International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, 2002, Seattle, WA, United States

Abstract

The periodic helical structure of an aligned cholesteric liquid crystal gives rise to circular Bragg reflection such that circularly polarised light of the same handedness as the helix is reflected while counter circularly polarised light is transmitted. The resulting circularly polarised 1D photonic band gap can be used to suppress or enhance circularly polarised photoluminescence from a fluorescent guest material embedded in a chiral host whose resonance region coincides with the emission of the fluorophor. The periodic structure of the host suppresses emission of one circular handedness of certain frequencies and enhances the suppressed emission at the edges of the reflection band. To avoid the effects of redistributing the photon density of states across the spontaneous emission spectrum and to observe inhibition of spontaneous emission of one handedness a very narrow fluorophor is needed. In this paper, an organoterbium complex is embedded in a cholesteric reactive mesogen (RM) host, which is subsequently polymerized by UV-exposure to generate a chiral polymer. The reflection band of the chiral host is tuned to completely overlap the different emission lines of the organolanthanide as well as to lie in between them. We investigate how the suppression of one emission channel causes a redistribution of probabilities for the remaining pathways resulting in a spectral and spatial redistribution of emission.

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Kristina Bjorknas, Peter Raynes, Sandra Gilmour, Victor Christou, and Kai Look "Circularly polarized luminescence from an organoterbium emitter embedded in a chiral polymer", Proc. SPIE 4806, Complex Mediums III: Beyond Linear Isotropic Dielectrics, (24 June 2002); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.472990

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