Arrays of liquid crystal lenses based on photosensitive polymer orientant

  • Veranika Yu. Stanevich Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus
  • Daminika S. Chepeleva Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus
  • Alexander D. Kurilov Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus
  • Veronika S. Bezruchenko Morrow NV, 1 Frieda Seisstraat Street, Ghent 9052, Belgium
  • Anatoli A. Murauski Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus

Abstract

New approaches have been developed for creating liquid crystal devices that control the angular distribution of light. An alignment material has been synthesised, with help of which the distribution of the liquid crystal director on the surface of the substrates is formed. When light passes through the liquid crystal cell, distribution makes possible to obtain a wave front similar to a conventional lens. This material is a copolymer (BVS) of butyl methacrylate (BMA), vanillyl methacrylate (VMA) and stearyl methacrylate (SMA). Liquid crystal cells with different lens array packages (square and hexagonal) are manufactured. It is shown that in order to realise the maximum scattering of a controlled refractive-scattering structure, the lens density in the packing should be as high as possible. It has been established that the hexagonal packing of the lens array is optimal, since in this case the area occupied by the lenses is 5 % larger than in the case of square packing. The focal length of an array of liquid crystal lenses in polarised light is calculated. It has been established that the smallest focal length is typical for the blue wavelength range, and the largest for the red one. The dependence of the focal length on the radius of the liquid crystal lens, the thickness of the liquid crystal layer and the birefringence of liquid crystal materials is studied. The developed copolymer (BVS) makes it possible to manufacture an array of lenses on a plastic substrate due to low-temperature processing (≤ 70 °C), which leads to the prospects for using this material in the field of creating modern devices and systems for controlling light beams.

Author Biographies

Veranika Yu. Stanevich, Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus

junior researcher at the laboratory of materials and technologies of LC devices

Daminika S. Chepeleva, Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus

junior researcher at the laboratory of materials and technologies of LC devices

Alexander D. Kurilov, Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus

PhD (physics and mathematics); head of the laboratory of theoretical and applied nanotechnology

Veronika S. Bezruchenko, Morrow NV, 1 Frieda Seisstraat Street, Ghent 9052, Belgium

PhD (physics and mathematics); material engineer

Anatoli A. Murauski, Institute of Chemistry of New Materials, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 36 Francyska Skaryny Street, Minsk 220141, Belarus

PhD (physics and mathematics); leading researcher at the laboratory of materials and technologies of LC devices

References

  1. Rushnova II, Melnikova EA, Kabanova OS, Tolstik AL, Muravsky AA. Fringe field-tunable LC refractive index interface for in-plane beam steering applications. Applied Optics. 2020;59(34):10695–10699. DOI: 10.1364/AO.409688.
  2. Bezruchenko VS. Fotoinducirovannye izmenenija ugla prednaklona zhidkogo kristalla na poverhnosti sloev benzal’degidsoderzhashhih polimerov dlja formirovanija adaptivnyh linz [Photoinduced changes in the pretilt angle of a liquid crystal on the surface of layers of benzaldehyde-containing polymers for the formation of adaptive lenses] [dissertation]. Minsk: [s. n.]; 2022. 137 p. Russian.
  3. Bezruchenko VS, Muravsky AA, Murauski AA, Stankevich AI, Mahilny UV. Gradient pretilt angle alignment materials with different photosensitivity for tunable polarization-independent self-aligned liquid crystal lens. Journal of the Society for Information Display. 2021;29(11):825–832. DOI: 10.1002/jsid.990.
  4. Dai HT, Liu YJ, Sun XW, Luo D. A negative-positive tunable liquid-crystal microlens array by printing. Optics Express. 2009;17(6):4317–4323. DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.004317.
  5. Bezruchenko VS, Muravsky AA, Murauski AA, Stankevich AI, Mahilny UV. Tunable liquid crystal lens based on pretilt angle gradient alignment. Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals. 2016;626:222–228. DOI: 10.1080/15421406.2015.1106890.
  6. Bezruchenko VS, Mahilny UV, Stankevich AI, Muravsky AlAn, Muravsky AnAl, Kukhta IN. The formation of the centrosymmetric distributions of light intensity for exposure of photosensitive alignment layers of LC lenses. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Physics. 2017;3:12–19. Russian.
  7. Algorri JF, Zografopoulos DC, Urruchi V, Sánchez-Pena JM. Recent advances in adaptive liquid crystal lenses. Crystals. 2019;9(5):272. DOI: 10.3390/cryst9050272.
  8. Tóth LF. Lagerungen in der Ebene auf der Kugel und im Raum. Berlin: Springer-Verlag; 1953. 197 S. (Die Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen; Band 65). Russian edition: Tóth LF. Raspolozheniya na ploskosti, na sfere i v prostranstve. Makarova NM, translator; Yaglom IM, editor. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo fiziko-matematicheskoi literatury; 1958. 363 p.
  9. Fan F, Srivastava AK, Du T, Tseng MC, Chigrinov V, Kwok HS. Low voltage tunable liquid crystal lens. Optics Letters. 2013;38(20):4116–4119. DOI: 10.1364/OL.38.004116.
Published
2023-10-27
Keywords: liquid crystal, copolymer, aligning materials, liquid crystal lenses, lens array
How to Cite
Stanevich, V. Y., Chepeleva, D. S., Kurilov, A. D., Bezruchenko, V. S., & Murauski, A. A. (2023). Arrays of liquid crystal lenses based on photosensitive polymer orientant. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Physics, 3, 22-30. Retrieved from https://journals.bsu.by/index.php/physics/article/view/5563
Issue
No 3 (2023): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Physics
Section
Optics and Spectroscopy

Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of the Belarusian State University. Physics

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
  2. The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
  3. The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)