Abstract
This paper reviews the phase flicker associated with the phase-only liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) technology. The phase response of the LCOS device often fluctuates with the driving waveforms. Such phase flicker can cause detrimental effect in applications operating on either holographic or non-holographic principles. The origin of the phase flicker and its impact on the performances of various LCOS-based optical systems are explained. Methods to characterise the temporal response of the LCOS device will also be presented. The efforts to reduce the phase flicker in LCOS devices were reviewed. Perspectives on the future directions are also given.
Highlights
Phase-only liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices [1–5] are able to manipulate the optical field in a reconfigurable and efficient fashion
The coverplate plate is coated with a layer of indium tin oxide (ITO) to act as the common electrode, while the silicon backplane based on the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology has millions of individually addressable reflective electrodes, i.e. pixels
Analogue devices The analogue LCOS devices are traditionally associated with higher optical performances, especially in terms of the phase flicker, when compared with the digital ones
Summary
Phase-only liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices [1–5] are able to manipulate the optical field in a reconfigurable and efficient fashion. The technology was originally developed for information display applications including image projectors [6–9], augmented reality (AR) [10–12] and virtual reality (VR) [13, 14] displays. It has been widely used as the optical engine in optical switches [15–20], optical tweezers [21, 22], laser pulse shaping systems [23, 24], optical coherence tomography [25], mask-less lithography [26, 27], optical microscopy [28] and 3D printing [29]. When the LC molecules are vertically aligned [33] or parallel-aligned [34, 35], the tilting angle of the LC molecule will change according to the voltage on the pixels This leads to the change in the effective refractive index of the LC layer due to its birefringent nature. The LCOS device will only modulate the phase of the optical beam without affecting its amplitude.
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