We report an enhanced laser induced polarization switching and holography in a novel photo-reconfigurable material
system that contains polymer backbone impregnated by a soft liquid crystal material. The backbone of polymer chains is
reconfigurable and the surrounding movable liquid crystal molecules are reoriented collectively anchoring toward the
reconfigured polymer chains, resulting in remarkable enhancement of anisotropic refractive index modulation suitable
for updatable holographic recording. The dynamic polymer-liquid crystal network strengthening concept enables
significant enhancement of holographic performance with controllable updatability.
In terms of operational bandwidth and speed, photonic components are superior to electronic ones. However, it is
difficult to control photons on nanoscale structures for data processing and interconnection. Nanophotonic device using
surface plasmon (SP) offers an ideal solution to combine the superior technical advantages of both photonics and
electronics on the same chip. The SP wavelength is much shorter than that of the exciting light, allowing the use of SP in
various techniques that overcome diffraction limits. In this paper, we report an interesting plasmonic effect, enhanced
backward scattering, by using a periodically-aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) array. The CNTs are grown on a
transparent glass substrate with an average diameter of 50 nm and a length of about 1 μm. To enhance the conductivity,
the CNTs are also coated with 10-nm Au layer by using E-beam CVD technique. By shining a laser beam to the CNT
array, we found that the scattering intensity is maximally enhanced at the backward incident direction. The enhanced
backward incident scattering is observed by using both periodic and nonperiodic CNT samples. The experimental results
suggest that the backward scattering effect is due to the SP excitation and coupling. The proposed technique exploiting
aligned carbon-nanotube arrays to manipulate surface plasmon will lead to useful optical features such as optical
antennae effects, retro-reflection, switching, wavelength add/drop multiplexing, and may be particularly useful for
optical sensing, smart target identification and optical wireless secure communication applications.
The market demands for innovative, efficient, small package and single-mode light sources are always high because of
their broad applications in scientific, medical, industrial, and commercial fields. The high photoluminescence quantum
yield, photophysical and photochemical stability, and tunable emission wavelength make quantum dots ideal for a new
generation of solid state light sources. We report on the realization of various single-mode light sources in the visible
spectral band by using semiconductor quantum dots. The effective use of a waveguide structure can help achieve the
divergence control of the output light beam. This technique may benefit the development for next generation light
emitting diodes, optical communication, intelligent optical sensors, microprocessors, and nanoscale optical imaging
systems.
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