Photoalignment control: self-focusing effect in hybrid- and homeotropic-aligned dye-doped polymer-stabilized liquid crystals

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Nonlinear optics has drawn much attention for its great potential in applications, such as frequency conversion, multiple-photon absorption, self-focusing, and so on. However, such optical nonlinearities are generally observed at very high light intensities. In this study, we designed hybrid-aligned dye-doped polymer-stabilized liquid crystals (PSLC), in which the molecular director orientation gradually changes from homeotropic at one surface to homogeneous at the other. In such film, the threshold intensity required to form self-focusing effect was markedly reduced by a factor of 8.5 compared to that in a conventional homeotropic cell, which enabled the generation of the self-focusing effect using a handheld 1-mW laser pointer. In addition, we investigated the structural effect of dye molecules: azo-dye methyl red (MR, photoisomerizable)-doped PSLC was prepared and its NLO response was evaluated. It turned out that such MR-based LC system was not effective for self-focusing effect compared to oligothiophene-doped systems.

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