Low-voltage driving in nematic liquid crystal overlayered waveguide

In this paper we propose an electrooptic leaky anisotropic waveguide using a nematic liquid crystal overlayer for low-voltage driving, and demonstrate its fundamental operation at 0.63 μm. The peak-to-peak voltage required to obtain 20-dB extinction ratio was only 4 V, which was about one-tenth of that of the waveguide previously reported. Switching speeds of millisecond order are demonstrated.