Effect of surface treatment on nonlinear optical molecular reorientation of polymer-stabilized dye-doped liquid crystals

Abstract

Liquid crystals (LCs) has attracted much attention for potential applications in photonic devices due to nonlinear change in refractive index arising from their photoinduced molecular reorientation. Even in dye-doped LCs possessing large nonlinear optical property, they still require a high-intensity light source to induce molecular reorientation that limits the applicable situations. Recently, we have found that polymer-stabilized dye-doped liquid crystals greatly reduce the required light intensity. In this study, we examined the effect of surface treatment on the reorientation behavior, and succeeded in the reduction of light intensity by 30% just by optimizing the surface treatment condition.