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Electro-tunable optical diode based on photonic bandgap liquid-crystal heterojunctions

Nature Materials volume 4, pages 383–387 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Manipulation of light is in strong demand in information technologies. Among the wide range of linear and nonlinear optical devices that have been used, growing attention has been paid to photonic crystals that possess a periodic modulation of dielectric function1,2. Among many photonic bandgap (PBG) structures, liquid crystals with periodic structures are very attractive as self-assembled photonic crystals3, leading to optical devices such as dye lasers4,5. Here we report a new hetero-PBG structure consisting of an anisotropic nematic layer sandwiched between two cholesteric liquid-crystal layers with different helical pitches. We optically visualized the dispersion relation of this structure, displaying the optical diode performance: that is, the non-reciprocal transmission of circular polarized light at the photonic-bandgap regions. Transmittance spectra with circularly polarized light also reveal the diode performance, which is well simulated in calculations that include an electro-tunable diode effect. Lasing action was also confirmed to show the diode effect with a particular directionality.

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Figure 1: Structure and principle of the optical diode.
Figure 2: Simulated optical diode performance and electro-tunability.
Figure 3: Experimental measurements of non-reciprocal transmission in OHAS.
Figure 4: Lasing emission spectra from OHAS with a dye-doped anisotropic NLC layer.

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Acknowledgements

The laser dye used in this study was supplied from T. M. Swager (MIT). The work is supported by JSPS through the TIT-KAIST core university corroboration program, KOSEF through ABRL program at Ewha Womans University, 21st COE program of Materials Science in Tokyo Tech and a Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory Research (16656023) by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Jisoo Hwang, Myoung Hoon Song, Byoungchoo Park, Yoichi Takanishi, Ken Ishikawa & Hideo Takezoe

  2. Department of Physics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, 120-750, Korea

    Jisoo Hwang & J. W. Wu

  3. Department of Electrophysics, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, 139-701, Korea

    Byoungchoo Park

  4. Central Technical Research Laboratory, Nippon Oil Corporation, Yokohama, 231-0815, Japan

    Suzushi Nishimura & Takehiro Toyooka

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  1. Jisoo Hwang
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Correspondence to Hideo Takezoe.

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Hwang, J., Song, M., Park, B. et al. Electro-tunable optical diode based on photonic bandgap liquid-crystal heterojunctions. Nature Mater 4, 383–387 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1377

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