Wanlong Zhang

Photoaligned Nanorod Enhancement Films with Polarized Emission for Liquid‐Crystal‐Display Applications

Semiconductor nanorods (NR) emit polarized light, which is expected to bring manifold benefits, in terms of brightness and color enhancement, for modern liquid-crystal displays (LCD). In this regard, photoaligned nanorod enhancement films (NREF) for color and polarization conversion for LCD backlights are introduced here. The photoinduced anchoring forces, by the photoalignment layer, stimulate well-ordered self-assembly of NR in the thin polymer films. Green and red emitting NR with a quantum yield of ≈80% are aligned unidirectionally and in-plane, showing a polarization ratio of >7:1 and a degree of polarization of >0.81. The photoalignment technique facilitates the fabrication of mixed and multiple stacked NREF for LCDs, which improves the color gamut and polarization efficiency, and is thus expected to increase the optical efficiency of conventional LCDs by ≈60%.

Optically rewritable 3D liquid crystal displays

Optically rewritable liquid crystal display (ORWLCD) is a concept based on the optically addressed bi-stable display that does not need any power to hold the image after being uploaded. Recently, the demand for the 3D image display has increased enormously. Several attempts have been made to achieve 3D image on the ORWLCD, but all of them involve high complexity for image processing on both hardware and software levels. In this Letter, we disclose a concept for the 3D-ORWLCD by dividing the given image in three parts with different optic axis. A quarter-wave plate is placed on the top of the ORWLCD to modify the emerging light from different domains of the image in different manner. Thereafter, Polaroid glasses can be used to visualize the 3D image. The 3D image can be refreshed, on the 3D-ORWLCD, in one-step with proper ORWLCD printer and image processing, and therefore, with easy image refreshing and good image quality, such displays can be applied for many applications viz. 3D bi-stable display, security elements, etc.

Photoinduced Micropattern Alignment of Semiconductor Nanorods with Polarized Emission in a Liquid Crystal Polymer Matrix

Photoalignment technology provides high alignment quality with an exceptional control over the local director of liquid crystals. Because of the reorientation ability of sulfonic azo dye molecules, they offer high azimuthal and polar anchoring energy with a low pretilt angle for the orientation of liquid crystals and liquid crystal composites. In this work, we make use of this approach to align thin film composites of light-emitting semiconductor nanorods dispersed in a liquid crystal polymer into both one-dimensional and two-dimensional microscale patterns. After unidirectional alignment, the patterns are fabricated by a second irradiation with different polarization azimuth and the employment of a photomask. Fluorescence micrographs reveal the nanorod pattern alignment in domain sizes down to 2 μm. Apart from demonstrating the possibility of controlling the orientation of anisotropic nanocrystals with strongly polarized emission on microscopic scale, our results are promising for the fabrication of complex nanostructures for photonic applications.

Integrated and reconfigurable optical paths based on stacking optical functional films

A strategy for integrated and reconfigurable optical paths based on stacking optical functional films is proposed. It is demonstrated by stacking two liquid crystal polymer q-plates and one quarter-wave plate for vector vortex beams generation. The topological charge and polarization order of generated vector vortex beams can be controlled independently by stacking and reordering different optical films with repeated adhesive ability. It supplies a low-cost, light-weight and versatile technique for reducing the volume of free-space optical system and has a great potential in optical researches and applications.