Low voltage and high resolution phase modulator based on blue phase liquid crystals with external compact optical system

Abstract

Liquid crystal phase modulators are emerging as a new technological advancement, since they can be used for a wide range of applications. To improve their performance, polymer stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (PS-BPLC) phase modulators with fast response time and accurate phase profile become a necessary. Here, we proposed a facile PS-BPLC phase modulator to achieve particularly low voltage and high resolution. By employing a specific external compact optical system setup, the driving voltage is reduced to 26.09V to obtain 2π phase change at the wavelength of 532 nm. An accurate numerical modeling is also conducted to provide a systematic investigation of the fringing electric field effect to the performance of high resolution PS-BPLC phase modulator. The wavefront distortion caused by the fringing electric field can be automatically compensated to generate accurate phase profile for fast response liquid crystal phase modulator. This work provides a new protocol to realize liquid crystal on silicon based fast response and high resolution phase modulator.