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Abstract
We present a detailed theoretical and experimental study of the reflectance response of a deformed-helix ferroelectric (DHF) liquid crystal (LC) cell to an applied voltage under cross-polarisers. Using a model based on the effective dielectric tensor approximation, we derive simple analytical formulas to design a LC cell with maximum modulation depth and optimal linearity of the electro-optical response intensity versus the electric field. Our experimental results show that the cell works at frequencies up to 10 kHz and exhibits excellent linearity, with a total harmonic distortion as low as −70 dB. These findings suggest that DHF-LCs can be exploited to develop simple and accurate optical sensors.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Australian government, Smart Digital Optics and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology through the Australian Research Council (ARC), the ARC-Linkage research funding program and HKUST grants CERG 612409 and CERG 612310. Russian Foundation of Basic Research Grants 12-03-90021-Bel_a, 13-02-00598_a, 13-02-90487_Ukr_f_a are gratefully acknowledged.