Effect of host liquid crystal on nonlinear optical response of oligothiophene-doped liquid crystals

Abstract

Nonlinear optical effect that changes optical properties of materials in accordance with an incident light intensity has attracted much attention. Oligothiophene dye-doped liquid crystals (LCs) exhibit the large nonlinear optical effect based on their photoinduced molecular reorientation. Further enhancement of the effect might enable to achieve practical applications. In this study, we investigated the effect of host LCs on the photoinduced molecular reorientation using fluorinated LCs, aiming at increasing the sensitivity of the molecular reorientation.