Tunable photonic devices based on the temperature dependent photonic band gap in chiral nematic liquid crystals

Yuhua Huang; Ying Zhou; Shin-Tson Wu

doi:10.1117/12.678056

15 September 2006 Tunable photonic devices based on the temperature dependent photonic band gap in chiral nematic liquid crystals

Yuhua Huang, Ying Zhou, Shin-Tson Wu

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6332, Liquid Crystals X; 63320F (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.678056
Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics, 2006, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We have investigated the physical and optical properties of the left-handed chiral dopant ZLI-811 mixed in a nematic liquid crystal (LC) host BL006. The solubility of ZLI-811 in BL006 at room temperature is ~24 wt%, but can be enhanced by increasing the temperature. Consequently, the photonic band gap of the cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) mixed with more than 24 wt% chiral dopant ZLI-811 is blue shifted as the temperature increases. Based on this property, we demonstrate its applications in thermally tunable band-pass filters and dye-doped CLC lasers. In addition, we also demonstrated a spatially tunable laser emission by generating a one-dimensional temperature gradient along the dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) cell. The lasing wavelength is widely tunable from 577 nm to 670 nm. The lowest excitation energy and maximum lasing efficiency occur at λ~605 nm which corresponds to the peak fluorescence emission of the dye.

Citation Download Citation

Yuhua Huang, Ying Zhou, and Shin-Tson Wu "Tunable photonic devices based on the temperature dependent photonic band gap in chiral nematic liquid crystals", Proc. SPIE 6332, Liquid Crystals X, 63320F (15 September 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.678056

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