Electro-Optical Tuning in Photonic Crystals - Dispersed Liquid Crystalline Metamaterials

Two different metamaterial-liquid crystal structures are fabricated with the metamaterials as LC and semiconductor nanorods doped LC alignment layers. E-beam lithography was used to pattern the electron-sensitive polymer 1D PC structures. The nanostructured aligning surfaces have been characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy. The Photonic Crystals-Dispersed Liquid Crystalline Metamaterials (PCs-DLCMs) have been investigated through polarized optical microscopy. The threshold voltage and response times for the undoped and doped nematic LCs in the glass cells are measured as a function of the applied external electric field.