Integrated Liquid Crystal Waveguide in Polarization Maintaining Regime

The novel photonic devices based on integrated polarization maintaining liquid crystal waveguides are expected to have high optical performance in large photonic wavelength range, whereas the complexity of the design and the cost of the device are equivalent to regular passive matrix LC displays being cost efficient and friendly for mass- production. The combination of voltage controlled anisotropic properties of LC materials, specially shaped electrodes, pre-calculated applied voltage levels, dielectric layers and patterned liquid crystal alignment course the bulk of LC material to form a gradient waveguide. The layout of such LC waveguides can be created and switched by low voltages inside the liquid crystal cell. Suitable LC configurations were studied and optimized by commercial software LCD Master2D, Shintech. The waveguide properties were analyzed by the method of lines.