Fast switchable ferroelectric liquid crystal gratings with two electro-optical modes

Abstract

In this article, we reveal a theoretical and experimental illustration of the Ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) grating fabricated by mean of patterned alignment based on photo-alignment. The complexity related to the mismatching of the predefined alignment domains on the top and bottom substrate has been avoided by incorporating only one side photo aligned substrate while the other substrate does not have any alignment layer. Depending on the easy axis in the said alignment domains and the azimuth plane of the impinging polarized light, the diffracting element can be tuned in two modes i.e. DIFF/OFF switchable and DIFF/TRANS switchable modes, which can be applied to different applications. The diffraction profile has been illustrated theoretically that fits well with the experimental finding and thus the proposed diffraction elements with fast response time and high diffraction efficiency could find application in many modern devices.