Abstract

AbstractLiquid crystals with a varying phase profile enable reconfigurable and intelligent devices to be designed, which are capable of manipulating incident electromagnetic fields in display, telecommunications as well as wearable applications. The active control of defects in these devices is becoming more important, especially since the electrodes used to manipulate them are shrinking to nanometer length scales. In this paper, a simple subwavelength, 1D, interdigitated metal electrode structure that can be reconfigured using nematic liquid crystals aligned in the homeotropic, planar, and hybrid methods are demonstrated. Accurate electro‐optic modeling of the directors and the defects are shown, which are induced by the fringing electric fields. Applied voltages result in liquid crystal reorientation near the bottom surface, such that defects are induced between the electrodes. The height of the electrodes does not affect the lateral position of these defects. Rather, this can be achieved by increasing the biasing voltage on the top electrode, which also leads to greater splay‐bend in the bulk of the material. These results therefore aim to generalize the control of defects in complex anisotropic nematic liquid crystals using simple interdigitated structures for a range of reconfigurable intelligent surface applications.

Highlights

  • Background and TheoryThe orientation of nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) can be altered by an external electric field

  • The orientation of NLCs can be altered by an external electric field

  • We have shown that fringing electric fields generated from electrodes on the bottom substrate of an NLC device change the orientation of the liquid crystal directors

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Summary

Introduction

The orientation of NLCs can be altered by an external electric field. The Landau de Gennes (LdG) Q-tensor theory was used to determine this alignment, which depends on both orientational order, S(x), and a preferred direction of orientation, n(x).[31] To obtain n(x), the total free energy density of the LC material must be minimized. This energy is expressed in terms of the Q-tensor shown in Equation (1), where I is an identity matrix: Q

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