Converging Microlens Array Using Nematic Liquid Crystals Doped with Chiral Nanoparticles

Nematic liquid crystals of achiral molecules or racemic mixtures of chiral ones form flat films when suspended in submillimeter size grids and submerged under water. Recently, it has been shown (Popov et al., 2017) that films of nematic liquid crystals doped with chiral molecules adopt biconvex lens shapes underwater. The curved shape together with degenerate planar anchoring leads to a radial variation of the optical axis along the plane of the film, providing a Pancharatnam-Berry-type phase lens that modifies geometric optical imaging. Here, we describe nematic liquid crystal microlenses formed by the addition of chiral nanoparticles. It is found that the helical twisting power of the nanoparticles, the key factor to form the lens, is about 400 μm^-1, greater than that of the strongest molecular chiral dopants. We demonstrate imaging capabilities and measure the shape as well as the focal length of the chiral nanoparticle-doped liquid crystal lens. We show that measuring the shape of the lens allows one to calculate the helical pitch of the chiral nematic liquid crystal and thus determine the helical twisting power of the chiral ligand-capped nanoparticles. Such measurements require the use of only nanograms of chiral nanoparticles, which is 3 orders of magnitude less than that required by conventional techniques. Since NPs are sensitive to external stimuli such as light and electric and magnetic fields, the use of chiral NPs may allow the achievement of tunable optical properties for such microlens arrays.