Materials that change shape are attractive candidates to replace traditional actuators for applications with power or size restrictions. In this work, we design a polymeric bilayer that changes shape in response to both heat and water by the incorporation of a water-responsive hydrophilic polymer with a heat-responsive liquid crystal elastomer. The distinct shape changes based on stimulus are c...

An optically triggered liquid crystal infiltrated Q-switched photonic crystal laser is demonstrated. A photonic crystal laser cavity was designed and fabricated to support two orthogonally polarized high-Q cavity modes after liquid crystal infiltration. By controlling the liquid crystal orientation via a layer of photoaddressable polymer and a writing laser, the photonic crystal lasing mode can...

We have fabricated electrically switchable holographic gratings, using Polaroid Corporation's DMP-128 photopolymer filled with the nematic liquid crystal E7. It is shown that a coupled-wave theory that includes the effects of the birefringence of the liquid crystal must be used to explain the diffraction properties of these anisotropic volume gratings. Furthermore, a detailed comparison of theo...

A polymer-wall-confined transmissive switchable liquid crystal grating is proposed and investigated by two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain optical calculation and liquid-crystal-director calculation, to our knowledge for the first time. The results show how to obtain optimized conditions for high diffraction efficiency by adjusting the liquid crystal parameters, grating geometric stru...

Electrically tunable liquid crystal microlenses have attracted strong research attention due to their advantages of tunable focusing, voltage actuation, low power consumption, simple fabrication, compact structure, and good stability. They are expected to be essential optical devices with widespread applications. However, the slow response time of nematic liquid crystal (LC) microlenses has bee...

Novel birefringent liquid crystal polymer homeotropic films have been coated on semiconductor solar cells to improve the effective incident sunlight angles. The liquid crystal polymer precursor, based on reactive mesogens, is fluidic and flows like liquid. It would distribute uniformly on the solar cell sample surface by any traditional coating technique. The birefringence for light, due to the...

The generation of surface anisotropy by photochemical means has been proposed as an attractive method to align liquid crystals. In this paper, we present an experimental study of the alignment induced on a liquid crystal by a polymer film containing azo-dye groups in the side chain. Optical measurements were performed in nematic liquid crystal cells to determine the azimuthal and zenithal ancho...

5.3.2. Traps and Grating Dark Decay 3288 5.3.3. Other Concerns 3288 6. New Photorefractive Materials 3289 6.1. Polymer Composites 3289 6.2. Organic Amorphous Glasses 3292 6.3. Fully Functionalized Polymers 3294 6.4. Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystals 3295 6.5. Other Liquid Crystal-Containing Materials 3296 6.6. Near-Infrared-Sensitive Materials 3297 6.7. Other Materials Directions 3298 6.7.1. Hy...