Premium
Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Materials for Tunable Diffractive Optics
Author(s) -
Ryabchun Alexander,
Bobrovsky Alexey
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
advanced optical materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.89
H-Index - 91
ISSN - 2195-1071
DOI - 10.1002/adom.201800335
Subject(s) - materials science , homeotropic alignment , liquid crystal , fabrication , diffraction grating , holography , optoelectronics , optics , photonics , cholesteric liquid crystal , smart material , diffraction , grating , optical switch , nanotechnology , physics , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
Modern optics and photonics constantly require break‐through materials and designs in order to achieve miniature, lightweight, highly tunable, and effective optical devices. One of the basic optical components is the diffraction grating (DG), widely used for the dispersion of light, beam steering, etc. This review gathers research efforts on diffractive optical elements based on cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) materials with a supramolecular helical architecture. All main types and fabrication approaches of periodic diffractive structures from CLCs are classified and described. Key optical properties of DGs, their advantages and drawbacks are considered. Special attention is paid on the tunability of DGs including design principles and prospective chiral materials. The review consists of three parts divided according to the formation mechanism of diffractive structures: i) the spontaneously formed periodic structures from CLCs confined in cells with hybrid or homeotropic boundary conditions; ii) DGs generated by external electric field applied to CLCs layers; iii) light‐generated DGs (e.g., obtained by holography, mask exposure, photoalignment). The review also aims to initiate and gain collaborations between physicists, engineers and organic chemists to combine novel chiral photoswitches and molecular motors with sophisticated optical design paving the way towards novel smart optical materials.