Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal(PDLC)-based Electro-Optic Devices for Low-cost Photonic Applications

Description

Owing to the structural flexibility and ease of fabrication process capability, polymers are becoming increasing attractive for various photonic applications. Many researchers have successfully designed, fabricated and demonstrated many passive or active thermo-optic based polymer photonic devices. In this project, novel electro-optic polymer devices based on polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) are proposed. PDLC has very promising material characteristics in which a nematic liquid crystal mixture is dispersed in an isotropic polymer matrix in the form of droplets. Liquid crystal is a well-researched and mature technology, having the advantages of low cost, low driving voltage, short switching time, low loss and a wide spectral transparency ranging from visible to near infrared. Therefore, this project is proposed to research, fabricate, characterize and develop PDLC-based electro-optic devices for low-cost photonic applications. This proposal aims mainly at studying the PDLC processing phenomena and the fabrication of EO photonic devices so that novel low-cost photonic devices can be developed using this technology.