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9 December 2023 Optical manipulation of sessile droplets of nematic liquid crystalline materials on the surface of a photovoltaic crystal
Ridvan Karapinar, Luka Cmok, Xinzheng Zhang, Irena Drevenšek-Olenik
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Abstract

We investigated the effects of laser irradiation on sessile droplets of three well-known liquid crystalline materials (5CB, 8CB, E7) deposited on the surface of an iron-doped lithium niobate (LN:Fe) crystal. The static electric field, which is generated via the bulk photovoltaic effect in the LN:Fe substrate, produces the merging of smaller droplets into filaments oriented in the radial direction with respect to the laser spot. It also induces filament jetting from the rim of larger droplets toward the center of the illumination area. When the laser beam is focused directly onto the larger droplets, they abruptly disintegrate via the formation of several jet streams. The described effects are present in the nematic and also in the isotropic phase. We attribute them to a large gradient of the surface electric field that produces driving forces via the induced dipole moments of the droplets, analogous to electric field-based droplets transport mechanisms known for standard dielectric liquids.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Ridvan Karapinar, Luka Cmok, Xinzheng Zhang, and Irena Drevenšek-Olenik "Optical manipulation of sessile droplets of nematic liquid crystalline materials on the surface of a photovoltaic crystal," Journal of Optical Microsystems 3(4), 041209 (9 December 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JOM.3.4.041209
Received: 31 July 2023; Accepted: 17 November 2023; Published: 9 December 2023
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KEYWORDS
Liquid crystals

Laser irradiation

Crystals

Liquids

Photovoltaics

Electric fields

Optical manipulation

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