Electro-Steering Tapered Fiber-Optic Device with Liquid Crystal Cladding
Citation
Korec, Joanna, Karol A. Stasiewicz, Olga Strzeżysz, Przemysław Kula, and Leszek R. Jaroszewicz. “Electro-Steering Tapered Fiber-Optic Device with Liquid Crystal Cladding.” Journal of Sensors, vol. 2019, 2019, p. 1617685.
Keywords
- Liquid crystals (LC)
- Electro-steering
- Tapered fiber optic device
- 6CHBT and E7
- Wavelength range (550-1550 nm)
- Refractive index
- Optical power modulation
- Rubbing directions (orthogonal, parallel, twist)
- Time response
Brief
This article describes a hybrid fiber optic device that uses liquid crystals to steer light and modulate the power of electromagnetic waves in a broad range of wavelengths.
Summary
This article, published in the Journal of Sensors in 2019, describes the design and characterization of a fiber-optic device that uses liquid crystals to steer light. The device uses a tapered optical fiber with a liquid crystal cladding. When an electric field is applied, the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules changes, which changes the refractive index of the cladding and steers the light.
The researchers tested two different liquid crystal mixtures: 6CHBT and E7. They also tested three different orientations of the liquid crystal molecules: orthogonal, parallel, and twist. They found that the wavelength range of the device changes depending on the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules. The orthogonal orientation works in the infrared range, while the parallel and twist orientations work in the visible range.
The response time of the device was also found to be dependent on the frequency of the applied electric field. Increasing the frequency decreased the response time for all of the tested orientations. However, the parallel and twist orientations had a much smaller decrease in response time than the orthogonal orientation. The researchers conclude that the device has the potential to be used in a variety of applications, such as optical communications and sensing.
Origin: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2019/1617685