Phosphorescent Liquid Crystalline Polymer-based Circularly Polarized Luminescence Optical Waveguides for Enhanced...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Optoelectronics
• Polymer Chemistry

Background:

• Developing circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) optical waveguides is crucial for advanced photonic and optoelectronic devices.
• A significant challenge lies in creating CPL optical waveguide materials (OWMs) with low optical loss coefficients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and synthesize novel CPL OWMs with improved performance.
• To address the challenge of low optical loss in CPL waveguide materials.

Main Methods:

• Synthesized room-temperature phosphorescent liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs).
• Introduced chiral dopants to induce chiral arrangement, followed by photo-crosslinking.
• Removed chiral dopants via solvent soaking to achieve stable, solvent-resistant polymers.

Main Results:

• The synthesized LCPs exhibited a nematic liquid crystal phase and a phosphorescence lifetime of ~0.145 ms.
• Achieved highly efficient circularly polarized phosphorescence (CPP) with dissymmetric factors (g_RTP) of 0.16–0.17.
• Demonstrated efficient CPP signal waveguiding with a low optical loss coefficient of ~0.175 dB/mm.

Conclusions:

• Developed stable, solvent-resistant CPP-active OWMs based on LCPs.
• Successfully applied these OWMs in information encryption, decryption, and optical switching.
• Paved the way for next-generation photonic and optoelectronic devices utilizing CPP waveguiding.