Enhanced Chemical and Biological Sensor Based on Liquid Crystal Using a Bias Electric Field

Fundamentals of Liquid Crystals

“…Recently, it has been shown that LCs can be used for filling hollow fibers (microcapillaries) made of a material with a lower refractive index, such as Pyrex or silica glass, with the purpose of making easily tuned attenuators, equalizers, polarization controllers, phase emulators, nonlinear, high-quality image transmitting fiber arrays, and so on. Moreover, LC materials integrated with fiber have been employed for various sensing applications, such as chemical sensing, gas sensing [25], and biological sensing [26]. Moreover, LC materials integrated with fiber have been employed for various sensing applications, such as chemical sensing, gas sensing [25], and biological sensing [26].…”

“…Fiber optic sensors [27] have several advantages, such as immunity from electromagnetic interference, integrity in possibly dangerous environments, and possibility of large separation among the sensors and monitoring stations. Though these are drawbacks with nematics, such as the large losses of about 20 dB/cm and relatively slow responses, they may be useful in various nonlinear optical applications [26]. Whinnery et al and Giallorenzi et al (see Ref.…”