Electric field sensor based on cholesteric liquid crystal Fabry-Perot etalon

Abstract

We propose an electric field sensor using a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) Fabry-Perot etalon and a broadband optical source. The CLC cell consists of glass substrates, polyimide layers, electrodes, and CLC layer. There is a threshold behavior for CLC cell and no change in the transmitted wavelength occurs until a threshold value. The threshold value is 0.8 V/μm for fabricated CLC cell in this experiment. The transmitted or reflected wavelength from the CLC Fabry-Perot etalon depends on the applied electric field. The valley wavelengths of the transmitted light from the CLC device are linearly increased from 1303 nm to 1317 nm as the applied electric field to the CLC device is increased from 0.8 V/μm to 1.9 V/μm.