Proceedings Article | 12 February 2010
KEYWORDS: Liquid crystals, Waveguides, Phased array optics, Scanners, Electrodes, Electro optics, Microrings, Cladding, Free space optics, LIDAR
A new electro-optic waveguide platform, which provides unprecedented voltage control over optical phase delays (>
2mm), with very low loss (< 0.5 dB/cm) and rapid response time (sub millisecond), will be presented. This technology,
developed by Vescent Photonics, is based upon a unique liquid-crystal waveguide geometry, which exploits the
tremendous electro-optic response of liquid crystals while circumventing their historic limitations. The waveguide
geometry provides nematic relaxation speeds in the 10's of microseconds and LC scattering losses that are reduced by
orders of magnitude from bulk transmissive LC optics. The exceedingly large optical phase delays accessible with this
technology enable the design and construction of a new class of previously unrealizable photonic devices. Examples
include: 2-D analog non-mechanical beamsteerers, chip-scale widely tunable lasers, chip-scale Fourier transform
spectrometer (< 5 nm resolution demonstrated), widely tunable micro-ring resonators, tunable lenses, ultra-low power (<
5 microWatts) optical switches, true optical time delay devices for phased array antennas, and many more. All of these
devices may benefit from established manufacturing technologies and ultimately may be as inexpensive as a calculator
display. Furthermore, this new integrated photonic architecture has applications in a wide array of commercial and
defense markets including: remote sensing, micro-LADAR, OCT, FSO, laser illumination, phased array radar, etc.
Performance attributes of several example devices and application data will be presented. In particular, we will present a
non-mechanical beamsteerer that steers light in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.
