Laser-written polymeric scaffolds for micro-patterned liquid crystal alignment

ABSTRACT

We demonstrate that two-photon polymerisation-based direct laser writing (TPP-DLW) is a very convenient technique for the fabrication of tunable liquid crystal (LC) based optical diffractive structures. The underlying TPP-DLW scaffold is composed of out-of-plane oriented polymeric ribbons with surface relief gratings on their side walls that induce parallel alignment of the adjacent LC medium. With the aid of such scaffolds infiltrated with the standard nematic liquid crystalline mixture E7, we prepared optical transmission gratings whose diffraction efficiency can be tuned with electric or magnetic fields. We report on an experimental and theoretical comparison between both types of tuning mechanisms.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Liquid crystals
• micro-patterned alignment
• electrically tunable optical diffractive structures
• magnetically tunable optical diffractive structures

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support of Slovenian Science Agency (ARRS) in the framework of the research program P1-0192-“Light and Matter”, National Natural Science Foundation of China (11674182), 111 Project (B07013), and Tianjin Natural Science Foundation (17JCYBJC16700).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Javna Agencija za Raziskovalno Dejavnost RS [P1-0192];National Natural Science Foundation of China [11674182];Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City [17JCYBJC16700];111 Project, PR China [B07013].