Abstract
Polymer-stabilized liquid crystals, consisting of low concentrations of a polymeric electron acceptor, are shown to exhibit significantly enhanced photorefractive properties. The charge generation and transport of these composite systems are strongly modified from nematic liquid crystals doped with electron donors and acceptors. The new composites are produced by polymerizing a small quantity of a 1,4:5,8-naphthalenediimide electron acceptor functionalized with an acrylate group in an aligned nematic liquid crystal. Photopolymerization creates an anisotropic gel-like medium in which the liquid crystal is free to reorient in the presence of a space charge field, while maintaining charge trapping sites in the polymerized regions of the material. The presence of these trapping sites results in the observation of longer lived, higher resolution holographic gratings in the polymer-stabilized liquid crystals than observed in nematic liquid crystals alone. These gratings Bragg regime diffraction. Asymmetric beam coupling, photo-conductivity, and four-wave mixing experiments are performed to characterize the photophysics of these novel materials.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 102-109 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering |
Volume | 3471 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1998 |
Event | Xerographic Photoreceptors and Organic Photorefractic Materials IV - San Diego, CA, United States Duration: Jul 22 1998 → Jul 23 1998 |
Keywords
- Non-linear optics
- Photoconductivity
- Photorefractive materials
- Polymer-stabilized liquid crystals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Computer Science Applications
- Applied Mathematics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering