A Simulation of Liquid Crystal Grating with Field‐Induced Twist Deformation for Beam‐Steering Applications

Abstract

Beam‐steering device using liquid crystal (LC) grating with field‐induced twist deformation, which has symmetric LC director distribution, is demonstrated. The proposed LC cell can convert the polarizations without multidomain LC alignments, and the polarization of the output light can also be changed with different input polarization. Therefore, the polarization of the input light is controlled, and the polarization of the output light is analyzed by additional layers that each consists of a switchable quarter‐wave plate (QWP) and a linear polarizer. The transmitted light of the proposed LC cell can be diffracted in three different directions by changing the bias voltage. The calculated efficiency and angle of steering are 46% and 8°, respectively. Potential applications of such a grating for diffraction optics, optical interconnect, and beam‐steering devices are foreseeable.

Keywords

• bias voltage
• diffraction
• polarization