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Updated: May 24, 2026
Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Liquid crystal gratings based on alternate TN and PA photoalignment
Wei Hu1, Abhishek Srivastava, Fei Xu
1College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
Abstract:
A diffraction grating is proposed by periodically defining the liquid-crystal director distribution to form alternate parallel aligned and twist nematic regions in a cell placed between two crossed polarizers. Based on the combined phase and amplitude modulation, both 1D and 2D tunable gratings are demonstrated. Low voltage ON/OFF switching of 1st order diffracted light with extinction ratio over 80 is achieved within a small voltage interval of 0.15 Vrms. Unique four-state feature of the cell is obtained and their applications in optical logic devices are discussed.
