Deep ultraviolet hydrogel based on 2D cobalt-doped titanate

Birefringent optical elements that work in deep ultraviolet (DUV) region become increasingly important these years. However, most of the DUV optical elements have fixed birefringence which is hard to be tuned. Here, we invent a birefringence-tunable optical hydrogel with mechano-birefringence effect in the DUV region, based on two-dimensional (2D) low-cobalt-doped titanate. This 2D oxide material has an optical anisotropy factor of 1.5 × 10^-11 C² J^-1 m^-1, larger than maximum value obtained previously, leading to an extremely large specific magneto-optical Cotton-Mouton coefficient of 3.9 × 10⁶ T^-2 m^-1. The extremely large coefficient enables the fabrication of birefringent hydrogel in a small magnetic field with an ultra-low concentration of 2D oxide material. The hydrogel can stably and continuously modulate 303 nm DUV light with large phase tunability by varying the strain (compression or stretching) from 0 to 50%. Our work opens the door to design and fabricate new proof-of-concept DUV birefringence-tunable element, as demonstrated by optical hydrogels capable of DUV modulation by mechanical stimuli.