Toward High Speed Modulation By Nematic Liquid Crystals

Abstract

The generalized dual field effect on the response times of liquid crystals has been analyzed and demonstrated experimentally by using both static magnetic and pulsed optical fields.An improvement in decay time higher than one order of magnitude, depending on the field strength, can be achieved. At high fields, this relaxation time is inversely proportional to the external field intensity and is independent of the liquid crystal thickness.In addition, thermal modulation of liquid crystals was investigated.The response times of the opto-optical thermal modulation are found to be much faster than the corresponding electro -optic modulation of liquid crystals.