Wide band gap materials as a new tuning strategy for dye doped cholesteric liquid crystals laser

A new tuning strategy for mirror-less liquid crystals laser is presented. A three layer cell is prepared with two cholesteric layers sandwiching a layer containing an isotropic mixture of a photoluminescent dye. One of the chiral layers contains a wide band gap material while the second layer consists of a series of small band gap materials. Through the combination of these two layers, a set of mirrors that can selectively reflect different wavelengths is obtained. A different laser wavelength is emitted from different regions of the cell under the pumping beam irradiation. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America