Today, liquid crystals (LC) and LC polymers (LCP) are the basis of display technologies and widely use in research laboratories for creation of new generation optical elements. In the above-mentioned technologies LC cells are used as a check sample. Having rich experience in the field, we are well acquainted with devices used for LC cells making and investigation. In particular, cell filling is mainly carried out in non-standard conditions using the technical capabilities of laboratories, and to study time and electro-optical characteristics standard generators and oscillographs are used. In this paper our developed devices for LC cells making and investigation are presented. Currently, research laboratories work with high-quality, expensive LC materials, and their use without losses is an urgent task. In addition, when filling LC cells, it is necessary to strictly control technological parameters and visually observe the process. In our developed “LC Vacuum Filler” device all these tasks are solved in a complex manner. Another device, “LC Driver” is designed to generate signals of various shapes, to control the operation of LC devices and to register phase change under influence of control signals. The following technical opportunities are available: selection and configuration of various waveforms, registration of control voltage amplitude and signal from output of photodiode, smooth change of control voltage within the given range by the selected rate, registration of phase shift vs. the applied voltage. To ensure the required temperature conditions, the device is equipped with a temperature stabilization unit based on Peltier elements.
Photoalignment on azo dye films is a simple and efficient way to achieve anisotropic ordering of molecules, which is promising to achieve ultra-thin high-performance dichroic polarizers. Besides, the photoalignment technique shows a unique advantage on patterned alignment applications, and enables the realization of advanced optical elements such as liquid crystal (LC) Dammann grating, LC Fresnel lens, holographic polarizers and bifocal optical-vortex lens.
The giant optical non-linearity of liquid crystals was used to develop a device for measuring intensity of laser beams. The sensitivity of the device was substantially increased by substitution of one of glass substrates of the liquid crystal cell by a photosensitive semiconductor. It is shown that this is due to decreased anchoring energy of LC molecules on the semiconductor surface. The peculiarities of giant optical non-linearity in a liquid crystal cell with one semiconductor substrate are investigated. The discovered regularities allow supposing that the observed decrease in anchoring energy is caused by the semiconductor surface states recharging at light generation.
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