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66 Results Found

  • Review
  • Open Access
31 Citations
6,816 Views
16 Pages

Patterned Photoalignment in Thin Films: Physics and Applications

  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Aleksey Kudreyko and
  • Qi Guo

21 January 2021

Photoalignment of liquid crystals by using azo dye molecules is a commonly proposed alternative to traditional rubbing alignment methods. Photoalignment mechanism can be well described in terms of rotational diffusion of azo dye molecules exposed by...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
5,031 Views
9 Pages

Ultrafast Photoalignment: Recording a Lens in a Nanosecond

  • Svetlana V. Serak,
  • Timothy J. Bunning and
  • Nelson V. Tabiryan

3 November 2017

Liquid crystals can be photoaligned with a single nanosecond pulse acting on thin photoanisotropic coatings on the cell substrates. This phenomenon was demonstrated for pulses of 532 nm and 355 nm wavelengths (second and the third harmonics of a Nd:Y...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,830 Views
11 Pages

15 February 2023

Photoalignment technology enables macroscopic alignment of liquid crystalline molecules and their aggregates in a non-contact process by irradiating photo-responsive liquid crystalline compounds with linearly polarized light. Because photoalignment t...

  • Article
  • Open Access
24 Citations
7,437 Views
8 Pages

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Dammann Grating by Patterned Photoalignment

  • Fan Fan,
  • Lishuang Yao,
  • Xiaoqian Wang,
  • Liangyu Shi,
  • Abhishek K. Srivastava,
  • Vladimir G. Chigrinov,
  • Hoi-Sing Kwok and
  • Shuangchun Wen

6 March 2017

In this article, a ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) dammann grating (DG) is demonstrated based on the patterned photoalignment technology. By applying low electric field (10 V) on the FLC DG, the grating can switch between a diffractive state with...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,031 Views
13 Pages

7 January 2021

We provide experimental evidence for the influence of the molecular structure of the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on the photoalignment process in three dimensions at the interface with a polymer layer. In particular, the experimental findings are ex...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
2,364 Views
13 Pages

20 September 2022

The mesogen orientations of liquid crystals are sensitive to the nature of the contacting surface. For side chain liquid crystalline polymer (SCLCP) films, most investigations have been conducted for thin films formed on a solid substrate surface suc...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2,073 Views
13 Pages

Photo-Durable Molecularly Oriented Liquid Crystalline Copolymer Film based on Photoalignment of N-benzylideneaniline

  • Gento Nakajima,
  • Mizuho Kondo,
  • Moritsugu Sakamoto,
  • Tomoyuki Sasaki,
  • Hiroshi Ono and
  • Nobuhiro Kawatsuki

12 March 2023

Copolymer films of photoalignable liquid crystalline (LC) copolymethacrylates comprised of a phenyl benzoate mesogen connected with N-benzylideneaniline end moiety (NBA2) and benzoic acid (BA) side groups exhibit a photoinduced reorientation behavior...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1,735 Views
12 Pages

5 February 2025

In this paper, we present a novel approach for advanced, three-dimensional patterned ordering of nematic liquid crystals. Our method allows for simultaneous control of azimuth and tilt of molecules by using a two-step process based on patterned photo...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
1,687 Views
12 Pages

Photoaligning Polymeric Command Surfaces: Bind, or Mix?

  • Ameer R. K. Nassrah,
  • Marianna Batkova,
  • Natália Tomašovičová and
  • Tibor Tóth-Katona

30 October 2023

We compare photoaligning properties of polymer layers fabricated from the same constituents: polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and azo-dye Disperse Red 1 (DR1), either chemically attached to the PMMA main-chain, or physically mixed with it. Photoalignin...

  • Review
  • Open Access
67 Citations
10,582 Views
14 Pages

1 March 2013

Photoalignment possesses obvious advantages in comparison with the usually “rubbing” treatment of the substrates of liquid crystal display (LCD) cells. The application of the photoalignment and photopatterning nanotechnology for the new generation of...

  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
49 Citations
8,050 Views
15 Pages

Photoaligning and Photopatterning: New LC Technology

  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Jiatong Sun and
  • Xiaoqian Wang

20 April 2020

We demonstrate a physical model of photoalignment and photopatterning based on rotational diffusion in solid azo-dye nanolayers. We also highlight the new applications of photoalignment and photopatterning in display and photonics such as: (i) liquid...

  • Review
  • Open Access
10 Citations
6,144 Views
24 Pages

1 July 2020

This paper examines different applications of ferroelectric liquid crystal devices based on photo-alignment. Successful application of the photo-alignment technique is considered to be a critical breakthrough. A variety of display and photonic device...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
716 Views
16 Pages

Polarimetric-Based Analysis and Manufacturing of Dye-Doped Liquid Crystal Photoaligned Cells for the Visible Range

  • Adrián Moya,
  • Adriana R. Sánchez-Montes,
  • Emilio J. Mena,
  • Manuel Ortuño,
  • Mariela L. Álvarez,
  • Eva M. Calzado and
  • Andrés Márquez

15 September 2025

The accurate and controlled alignment of liquid crystals (LCs) in modern optical devices is of great importance. Photoalignment is one of the most appealing approaches for achieving more versatile alignment in designs. One of the most important param...

  • Review
  • Open Access
12 Citations
4,138 Views
13 Pages

Photoaligned Liquid Crystalline Structures for Photonic Applications

  • Aleksey Kudreyko,
  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Gurumurthy Hegde and
  • Denis Chausov

17 June 2023

With the advancement of information display technologies, research on liquid crystals is undergoing a tremendous shift to photonic devices. For example, devices and configurations based on liquid crystal materials are being developed for various appl...

  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
7,300 Views
8 Pages

20 December 2017

We study computer-generated geometric-phase holograms (GPHs) realized by photo-aligned liquid crystals, in both simulation and experiment. We demonstrate both far-field and Fresnel holograms capable of producing far-field and near-field images with p...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,697 Views
9 Pages

Photo-Aligned Nematic Liquid Crystals Enable the Modulation of Thermoplasmonic Heating

  • Giovanna Palermo,
  • Rossella Grillo,
  • Luigia Pezzi,
  • Thomas Bürgi,
  • Nelson Tabiryan,
  • Luciano De Sio and
  • Cesare Umeton

7 July 2021

We experimentally demonstrate that the plasmonic heat delivered by a single layer of homogeneously distributed gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), immobilized on a glass substrate, can be optically tuned by taking advantage of the properties of an organic la...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
2,947 Views
12 Pages

26 March 2022

Highly efficient optical diffraction can be realized with the help of micrometer-thin liquid crystal (LC) layers with a periodic modulation of the director orientation. Electrical tunability is easily accessible due to the strong stimuli-responsivene...

  • Review
  • Open Access
46 Citations
10,376 Views
22 Pages

Recent Advances in Photoalignment Liquid Crystal Polarization Gratings and Their Applications

  • Tiegang Lin,
  • Jin Xie,
  • Yingjie Zhou,
  • Yaqin Zhou,
  • Yide Yuan,
  • Fan Fan and
  • Shuangchun Wen

31 July 2021

Liquid crystal (LC) circular polarization gratings (PGs), also known as Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) phase deflectors, are diffractive waveplates with linearly changed optical anisotropy axes. Due to the high diffraction efficiency, polarization selectivi...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
3,489 Views
11 Pages

Spectral Properties of Photo-Aligned Photonic Crystal Fibers Infiltrated with Gold Nanoparticle-Doped Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

  • Daniel Budaszewski,
  • Kaja Wolińska,
  • Bartłomiej Jankiewicz,
  • Bartosz Bartosewicz and
  • Tomasz Ryszard Woliński

4 September 2020

This paper describes our recent results on light propagation in photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) partially infiltrated with W212 ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) doped with 1–3 nm gold nanoparticles (NPs) with a concentration in the range of 0....

  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
4,273 Views
9 Pages

Optically Tunable Terahertz Metasurfaces Using Liquid Crystal Cells Coated with Photoalignment Layers

  • Yi-Hong Shih,
  • Xin-Yu Lin,
  • Harry Miyosi Silalahi,
  • Chia-Rong Lee and
  • Chia-Yi Huang

10 September 2021

An optically tunable terahertz filter was fabricated using a metasurface-imbedded liquid crystal (LC) cell with photoalignment layers in this work. The LC director in the cell is aligned by a pump beam and makes angles θ of 0, 30, 60 and 90° with res...

  • Communication
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,035 Views
9 Pages

17 January 2024

Extensive research has been devoted to spiral phase contrast imaging because of its notable capacity to enhance the edges of both phase and amplitude objects. We demonstrate a setup using ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) fork grating (FG) to enable...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
2,788 Views
8 Pages

A Planar Fresnel Lens in Reflection Type Based on Azo-Dye-Doped Cholesteric Liquid Crystals Fabricated by Photo-Alignment

  • Bing-Yau Huang,
  • Ting-Hui Chen,
  • Tzu-Yeh Chen,
  • Jia-De Lin,
  • Tsung-Hsien Lin and
  • Chie-Tong Kuo

12 December 2020

This paper presents a focusing efficiency and focal length tunable planar Fresnel lens in reflection type based on azo-dye-doped cholesterol liquid crystal film. The Fresnel-like pattern of a pumping beam can be formed by a Sagnac interferometer. Whe...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
2,705 Views
10 Pages

4 August 2022

Optically driving liquid crystal displays (ODLCDs) are widely applied in display and optical devices due to their long axis of liquid crystal (LC) molecules that can be tuned by a photo-alignment layer under exposure polarized light. However, their u...

  • Review
  • Open Access
9 Citations
2,703 Views
13 Pages

Photonic Devices with Multi-Domain Liquid Crystal Structures

  • Aleksey Kudreyko,
  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Kristiaan Neyts,
  • Denis Chausov and
  • Arina Perestoronina

28 May 2024

Photoalignment by azo dye nanolayers can provide high alignment quality for large-area liquid crystal devices. Application of this technology to active optical elements for signal processing and communications is a hot topic of photonics research. In...

  • Communication
  • Open Access
9 Citations
3,130 Views
12 Pages

31 December 2021

In this communication, we summarise our results related to light-induced orientational phenomena at liquid crystal–polymer interfaces. We investigated photoalignment for various nematics at the interface with the photosensitive polymer layer po...

  • Article
  • Open Access
426 Views
14 Pages

Transmissive Multilayer Geometric Phase Gratings Using Water-Soluble Alignment Material

  • Fatemeh Abbasi,
  • Kristiaan Neyts,
  • Inge Nys and
  • Jeroen Beeckman

15 January 2026

Multilayer liquid crystal devices can offer enhanced optical functionalities for augmented reality and photonic applications, but fabrication remains severely limited by solvent incompatibility between photoalignment materials and underlying polymeri...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,068 Views
16 Pages

Capillary Flows of Nematic Liquid Crystal

  • Dina V. Shmeliova,
  • Sergey V. Pasechnik,
  • Semen S. Kharlamov,
  • Alexandre V. Zakharov,
  • Eugeny P. Pozhidaev,
  • Vadim A. Barbashov and
  • Timofey P. Tkachenko

11 November 2020

In this paper we report the new experimental results on the rise of a liquid crystal in flat capillaries with inner photosensitive surfaces. The capillaries with different surface orientations were prepared by the use of the photo-alignment technique...

  • Review
  • Open Access
94 Citations
16,588 Views
21 Pages

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals: Physics and Applications

  • Qi Guo,
  • Kexin Yan,
  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Huijie Zhao and
  • Michael Tribelsky

9 September 2019

Electrooptic modes with fast response and high contrast ratio are highly desirable in modern photonics and displays. Ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) are especially promising for fulfilling these demands by employing photoalignment technology in...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
1,749 Views
11 Pages

28 December 2024

Properties of surface anchoring depend on the absorbed exposure energy and various potential interactions associated with liquid crystal and azo dye layers. In this study, we investigate a model of dispersion, steric and photoinduced interactions wit...

  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
4,964 Views
17 Pages

19 September 2020

Photo-alignment is a versatile tool to pattern the alignment at the confining substrates in a liquid crystal (LC) cell. Arbitrary alignment patterns can be created by using projection with a spatial light modulator (SLM) for the illumination. We demo...

  • Review
  • Open Access
20 Citations
8,032 Views
25 Pages

5 August 2020

Chiral liquid crystal phases show fascinating structural and optical properties due to their inherent helical characteristics. Among the various chiral liquid crystal phases, the helical nanofilament phase, made of achiral bent-shaped molecules, has...

  • Article
  • Open Access
778 Views
8 Pages

On-Demand Photopatterned Twisted Nematics for Generation of Polychromatic Vector Fields

  • Edvard Grigoryan,
  • Hayk H. Harutyunyan,
  • Hrayr Hakobyan,
  • Sergey A. Shvetsov,
  • Tetiana Orlova,
  • Mushegh Rafayelyan and
  • Vahram L. Grigoryan

11 October 2025

A simple and efficient approach to spatially addressed polychromatic modulation of light polarization using a photopatterned nematic liquid crystal film is proposed and investigated. In particular, we demonstrate linear polarization structuring of th...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,108 Views
9 Pages

Photoinduced Reorientation and Polarized Fluorescence of a Photoalignable Liquid Crystalline Polymer

  • Hiroki Furukawa,
  • Hinano Yamaguchi,
  • Mizuho Kondo,
  • Moritsugu Sakamoto,
  • Tomoyuki Sasaki,
  • Hiroshi Ono and
  • Nobuhiro Kawatsuki

24 June 2022

Thermally stimulated photoinduced reorientation of liquid crystalline (LC) polymethacrylate composed of a phenyl benzoate mesogen connected with N-benzylideneaniline (NBA2) end moiety exhibits a significant molecular reorientation (D > 0.7) when t...

  • Review
  • Open Access
8 Citations
3,656 Views
10 Pages

Optically Rewritable Liquid Crystal Displays: Characteristics and Performance

  • Vladimir G. Chigrinov,
  • Aleksey A. Kudreyko and
  • Fedor V. Podgornov

1 September 2021

Recent achievements in the photoalignment technique for fabrication of optically rewritable electronic paper with high performance characteristics are surveyed with emphasis on temporal constraints on the exposure process. The possibility of creating...

  • Article
  • Open Access
26 Citations
7,939 Views
8 Pages

Generating, Separating and Polarizing Terahertz Vortex Beams via Liquid Crystals with Gradient-Rotation Directors

  • Shi-Jun Ge,
  • Zhi-Xiong Shen,
  • Peng Chen,
  • Xiao Liang,
  • Xin-Ke Wang,
  • Wei Hu,
  • Yan Zhang and
  • Yan-Qing Lu

18 October 2017

Liquid crystal (LC) is a promising candidate for terahertz (THz) devices. Recently, LC has been introduced to generate THz vortex beams. However, the efficiency is intensely dependent on the incident wavelength, and the transformed THz vortex beam is...

  • Article
  • Open Access
30 Citations
8,058 Views
9 Pages

Light-Driven Rotation and Pitch Tuning of Self-Organized Cholesteric Gratings Formed in a Semi-Free Film

  • Ling-Ling Ma,
  • Wei Duan,
  • Ming-Jie Tang,
  • Lu-Jian Chen,
  • Xiao Liang,
  • Yan-Qing Lu and
  • Wei Hu

21 July 2017

Cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) has attracted intensive attention due to its ability to form a periodic helical structure with broad tunability. CLC gratings in open systems are especially promising in sensing and micromanipulation. However, there i...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,785 Views
12 Pages

Customized Design of Aperiodic Liquid Crystal Grating for Generation of Multiple Optical Patterns

  • Chen Liu,
  • Zhenghao Guo,
  • Jun Wu,
  • Dong Yuan,
  • Guofu Zhou,
  • Biao Tang and
  • Huapeng Ye

11 February 2023

Liquid crystal (LC) grating has drawn extensive attention due to its merits, including tunability, easy preparation process, cost effectiveness, and high diffraction efficiency. However, limited efforts have been made to explore LC grating for the ge...

  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
5,991 Views
16 Pages

Process for a Reactive Monomer Alignment Layer for Liquid Crystals Formed on an Azodye Sublayer

  • Junren Wang,
  • Colin McGinty,
  • Robert Reich,
  • Valerie Finnemeyer,
  • Harry Clark,
  • Shaun Berry and
  • Philip Bos

12 July 2018

In this work, the detailed studies of surface polymerization stabilizing liquid crystal formed on an azodye sublayer are presented. The surface localized stabilization is obtained by free-radical polymerization of a dilute solution of a bi-functional...

  • Review
  • Open Access
9 Citations
3,084 Views
13 Pages

Photosensitive Alignment: Advanced Electronic Paper-Based Devices

  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Aleksey Kudreyko and
  • Jiatong Sun

9 March 2022

In this review we describe the reversible photoalignment effect imposed on the director in nematic liquid crystals that provides an approach for fabrication of advanced optically addressed devices. Several new concepts have been developed to render p...

  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
4,064 Views
12 Pages

Tunable Polarization Gratings Based on Nematic Liquid Crystal Mixtures Photoaligned with Azo Polymer-Coated Substrates

  • Mateusz Nieborek,
  • Katarzyna Rutkowska,
  • Tomasz Ryszard Woliński,
  • Bartosz Bartosewicz,
  • Bartłomiej Jankiewicz,
  • Dariusz Szmigiel and
  • Anna Kozanecka-Szmigiel

31 August 2020

Liquid crystal polarization gratings are of great interest for optical communications as elements performing beam steering, splitting, multiplexing or beam combining. Material birefringence, cell thickness or a period of the liquid crystal director p...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,444 Views
14 Pages

Photoaligned Tunable Liquid Crystal Lenses with Parabolic Phase Profile

  • Svitlana P. Bielykh,
  • Liana Lucchetti and
  • Victor Yu. Reshetnyak

15 July 2023

We present a theoretical model of a cylindrical tunable liquid crystal lens based on the modulation of anchoring energy. The latter can be easily obtained using photoalignment techniques. The liquid crystal cell we propose exhibits strong anchoring a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
3,428 Views
8 Pages

Light-Driven Pitch Tuning of Self-Assembled Hierarchical Gratings

  • Yuan-Hang Wu,
  • Sai-Bo Wu,
  • Chao Liu,
  • Qing-Gui Tan,
  • Rui Yuan,
  • Jing-Ge Wang,
  • Ling-Ling Ma and
  • Wei Hu

25 March 2021

Gratings are of vital importance in modern optics. Self-assembled cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) gratings have attracted intensive attention due to their easy fabrication and broad applications. However, simultaneously achieving arbitrary patternin...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
2,229 Views
10 Pages

16 August 2022

A comprehensive theory of light-reflective characteristics and experimental technique of liquid crystal layer thickness control for flexible optically rewritable electronic paper is presented. Cylindrical pillars were used to control the gap between...

  • Review
  • Open Access
38 Citations
10,262 Views
22 Pages

18 June 2022

Liquid crystals (LCs) have become indispensable materials in everyday life, with their applications ranging from high-resolution television displays to being a part of sophisticated and modern equipment for telecommunications and sensing purposes. Va...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
2,522 Views
9 Pages

Flexible Optically Rewritable Electronic Paper

  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Aleksey Kudreyko and
  • Jiatong Sun

20 August 2023

In this article, we present the procedure of preparation of flexible electronic paper with a photosensitive azo dye layer as the key element for changing the orientation of the polarization plane. The main steps of the technology for the fabrication...

  • Article
  • Open Access
19 Citations
5,839 Views
8 Pages

20 February 2019

Liquid crystals are excellent candidates for tunable optical elements due to their large birefringence and continuous tunability by external fields. A dual-frequency liquid crystal lens integrated with Pancharatnam–Berry phase was fabricated vi...

  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
3,998 Views
7 Pages

The Effect of Operating Temperature on the Response Time of Optically Driven Liquid Crystal Displays

  • Vladimir Chigrinov,
  • Jiatong Sun,
  • Mikhail M. Kuznetsov,
  • Victor Belyaev and
  • Denis Chausov

20 July 2020

Optically driven liquid crystal displays (ODLCDs) realizes their display function by tuning the easy axis of liquid crystal (LC) molecules under polarized blue light, which has been utilized in some optical devices due to its advantages of ultra-low...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,315 Views
13 Pages

Design of Tunable Holographic Liquid Crystalline Diffraction Gratings

  • Katarzyna A. Rutkowska and
  • Anna Kozanecka-Szmigiel

27 November 2020

Tunable diffraction gratings and phase filters are important functional devices in optical communication and sensing systems. Polarization gratings, in particular, capable of redirecting an incident light beam completely into the first diffraction or...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
6,990 Views
9 Pages

Light-Driven Liquid Crystal Circular Dammann Grating Fabricated by a Micro-Patterned Liquid Crystal Polymer Phase Mask

  • Xiaoqian Wang,
  • Saibo Wu,
  • Weiqiang Yang,
  • Conglong Yuan,
  • Xiao Li,
  • Zhen Liu,
  • Manchun Tseng,
  • Vladimir G. Chigrinov,
  • Hoising Kwok and
  • Zhigang Zheng
  • + 1 author

21 August 2017

As one of the diffractive optical elements, circular Dammann grating has shown its excellent versatility in practical applications. The electrically switchable Dammann grating has been extensively investigated; however, the research on the optically...

  • Article
  • Open Access
34 Citations
9,057 Views
11 Pages

Designs of Plasmonic Metamasks for Photopatterning Molecular Orientations in Liquid Crystals

  • Yubing Guo,
  • Miao Jiang,
  • Chenhui Peng,
  • Kai Sun,
  • Oleg Yaroshchuk,
  • Oleg D. Lavrentovich and
  • Qi-Huo Wei

30 December 2016

Aligning liquid crystal (LC) molecules into spatially non-uniform orientation patterns is central to the functionalities of many emerging LC devices. Recently, we developed a new projection photopatterning technique by using plasmonic metamasks (PMMs...

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