[5p-C13-1~15] 12.3 Functional Materials and Novel Devices

△ [5p-C13-6] Photoinduced Reorientation of Dye-Doped Liquid Crystals Assisted with an Electric Field Application

〇Koji Usui¹, Kyohei Hisano¹, Norihisa Akamatsu¹, Atsushi Shishido^1,2 (1.Lab. for Chem. & Life Sci., Tokyo Tech., 2.PRESTO, JST)

Keywords:liquid crystal, nonlinear optical effect, electric field application

Liquid crystals (LCs) are a promising material for high-performance optical applications since they enable to change refractive index via cooperative molecular orientational change by an external field application. In LCs doped with a small amount of dye molecules, the efficiency of the photoinduced orientational change increases. Irradiation of the dye-doped LCs with linearly polarized light above a threshold intensity leads to molecular reorientation, which is triggered by the interaction between an optical electric field and photo-excited dye molecules. Recently, we found that the threshold intensity for a photoinduced molecular reorientation decreases merely by lowering surface anchoring of the glass substrate. In this study, we further reduced the threshold intensity by applying an electric field along the direction of molecular reorientation to assist its orientational change.