Tiger Amulet inspired high-security holographic encryption via liquid crystals

Due to the precise and continuous regulation of phase, holographic encryption based on metasurfaces and liquid crystals (LCs) has been proposed to encrypt the information by manipulating the wavelength, polarization, etc. However, the security cannot be fully guaranteed since the requirements of decoding methods for these schemes are generally not very strict and vulnerable for exhaustive attack. Furthermore, any part of the hologram stolen may lead to the disclosure of the hidden information regardless of the generation mode of phase delay or the selection of media material, so the security needs to be further improved. Here, inspired by Tiger Amulet, embodying the encryption consciousness of ancient China, we propose a simple but effective encryption method and design a "four-in-one" hologram based on photopatterned LCs. Specifically, the most important encrypted image can only be displayed when the four LC holograms in the same group are spliced into a whole according to the designed order. On the contrary, the camouflage information would be displayed if the holograms are placed in the optical path separately or spliced in wrong order. It is even more interesting that with the LC directors tilted with applied external voltages, the holographic efficiency of the LC hologram will change accordingly. This sets further demanding requirement on the decryption condition and thus increases the encryption security. With the advantages of simple design, high security, and low crosstalk, our encryption scheme has great potential in the fields of information hiding and image encryption.