Ricerc@Sapienza

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), characterized by high optical transparency and low surface energy, electric constant, and Young’s modulus, is widely recognized as an interesting, high-quality organic material for micro- and opto-fluidic functional systems. Other advantage of applying PDMS is its cheap and easy processing owning to the fact that PDMS-based photonic devices are typically fabricated with use of reliable technology based on a standard soft photolithography.

We present photonic devices based on a nematic liquid crystals (NLC) infiltrated in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channels, named LC:PDMS waveguides, for flexible photonic integrated circuits. A simulation study of the NLC ordering and possible defects under an electric field between coplanar gold electrodes has been carried out by a Monte Carlo approach.

This paper reports on optical waveguides using liquid crystals (LC) as core. Such optical waveguides have the advantage to be controlled by a low voltage electric field or by using an optical beam by exploiting the highly efficient electro-optic or nonlinear optical effects, respectively. Optical switches based on LC embedded in silicon grooves have been reported with on–off contrast over 40 dB by applying about 8 V.