Giant light deflection via electro-mechanical modulation of liquid crystals

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Abstract

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Koki Imamura, Hiroyuki Yoshida, and Masanori Ozaki, Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 061901 (2019) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5083980

Liquid crystals (LCs) are matter with fluidity and anisotropy and have been used in various electro-optic devices for their capabilityto modulate the refractive index by voltage. Here, we show that LCs are capable of electro-mechanically modulating light tocause giant light deflection at low voltages (exceeding 64° at 1.0 V). We use a composite material where polymerized cholestericLC particles that show optical Bragg reflection float in a nematic LC medium. The polymer-particles are elastically coupled withthe host director through their surface molecular anchoring and rotate from a face-on to side-on configuration at the Frederiktransition. Rigid-body rotation of the reflection plane causes light deflection, which is well reproducible and can be modelled theoretically.Our findings demonstrate the capability of LCs as a micro-electrical-mechanical system platform, which are potentiallyuseful for large-area light-controlling applications. This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (18J10027), JSPS KAKENHI (17H02766), and JST PRESTO (JPMJPR151D). The authors thank Merck Performance Materials for providing the chiral dopant.

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