Letter abstract
Nature Materials 4, 383 - 387 (2005)
Published online: 24 April 2005 | doi:10.1038/nmat1377
Subject Categories: Liquid crystals | Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials
Electro-tunable optical diode based on photonic bandgap liquid-crystal heterojunctions
Jisoo Hwang1,2, Myoung Hoon Song1, Byoungchoo Park1,3, Suzushi Nishimura4, Takehiro Toyooka4, J. W. Wu2, Yoichi Takanishi1, Ken Ishikawa1 & Hideo Takezoe1
Manipulation of light is in strong demand in information technologies. Among the wide range of linear and nonlinear optical devices that have been used, growing attention has been paid to photonic crystals that possess a periodic modulation of dielectric function1, 2. Among many photonic bandgap (PBG) structures, liquid crystals with periodic structures are very attractive as self-assembled photonic crystals3, leading to optical devices such as dye lasers4, 5. Here we report a new hetero-PBG structure consisting of an anisotropic nematic layer sandwiched between two cholesteric liquid-crystal layers with different helical pitches. We optically visualized the dispersion relation of this structure, displaying the optical diode performance: that is, the non-reciprocal transmission of circular polarized light at the photonic-bandgap regions. Transmittance spectra with circularly polarized light also reveal the diode performance, which is well simulated in calculations that include an electro-tunable diode effect. Lasing action was also confirmed to show the diode effect with a particular directionality.
- Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan
- Department of Physics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 120-750, Korea
- Department of Electrophysics, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 139-701, Korea
- Central Technical Research Laboratory, Nippon Oil Corporation, Yokohama 231-0815, Japan
Correspondence to: Hideo Takezoe1 e-mail: htakezoe@o.cc.titech.ac.jp
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