Nematic liquid crystal mixtures dedicated to thermally tunable terahertz devices

ABSTRACT

Low-loss nematic liquid crystal mixtures with low temperatures of nematic-to-isotropic phase transition are tested at terahertz frequencies. Experimental results show that through control of ambient temperature, the thermally induced transmittance’s tunability of quartz transducers infiltrated with these mixtures can change of up to 4% for 0.9 THz. Thermally tunable devices based on soft matter may find applications in next-generation modulation and switching components operating in the terahertz regime.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Nematic mixture
• tunable parameters
• thermal tunability
• terahertz properties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Polish Ministry of Sciences and Higher Education under grant Iuventus Plus no. 0365/IP2/2016/74, entitled ‘Tunable properties of metamaterial transducers with short response times in the THz range.’