Opt. Express 21, 30233–30242 (2013)

Credit: © 2013 OSA

A new class of liquid-crystal-based optical fibres have been fabricated by scientists in Germany and Slovenia. They grew the fibres by self-assembly in an immiscible water-based mixture containing a surfactant. The fibres consist of a series of coaxial, rolled-up layers of the liquid crystal 8CB, and are highly birefringent. The size of the fibres varies with the exact growing conditions, but the researchers say that they typically have a diameter ranging from a few micrometres to about 100 μm, and can reach several centimetres in length. The fibres were observed to guide light, and, when doped with a suitable dye such as Nile Red and optically pumped, they can lase as a result of the creation of whispering gallery modes. The threshold for laser operation was estimated to be 75 μW cm−2 with emission occurring at around 630 nm. The team says that such soft-matter structures formed from complex ordered fluids represent an exciting new family of photonic devices that can be grown and manipulated in a manner similar to living organisms.