Project Title:

High-Speed Liquid CrYstal in Fiber Switch

	  94-1	06.03	8958

	  High-Speed Liquid CrYstal in Fiber Switch

Abstract:

Recently, we successfully filled and aligned the ferroelectric 
liquid crystal (FLC) materials inside the hollow core fibers. By 
applying electrical fields across these fibers, molecular 
reorientation within the small core area (< 10um) was observed. 
This molecular reorientation can result in an index of refraction 
modulation. Therefore, phase modulation or amplitude modulation 
can be obtained with this compact, simple geometry. The 
significance of this proposed research effort is by combining the 
merits of FLC organic switching devices and fiber technologies, 
new electro-optic (EO) devices, such as in fiber switches, FLC-
fiber sensors, fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filters, second harmonic 
generators, and high speed EO modulators, can be realized without 
having to pigtail fiber to bulk devices, as required by current 
EO modulators

Commercial applications include optical second harmonic 
generation in the blue-green region, in-fiber switches, filters, 
and high-speed electro-optic modulators.

Key words

Boulder Nonlinear Systems, Inc
1898 South Flatiron Court
Boulder, CO 80301