1.
Appl Opt
; 48(28): 5301-6, 2009 Oct 01.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-19798369
ABSTRACT
We present the realization of an electrically tunable wave plate, which uses a nematic liquid-crystal (LC) phase retarder that allows fast and continuous control of the polarization state. This device is built using a quadripolar electrode design and transparent conductive polymer layers in order to obtain a uniform electric field distribution in the interelectrode area. With this realization, we obtain a high degree of control of the orientation of the electric field and, consequently, of the LC director. Indeed, this modulator outperforms classical bipolar LC cells in both optical path variation (>4 microm) and LC rotation speed (0.4 degrees/micros).