Study on controllable LC-micro blazed grating beam deflector in free space

Abstract

A liquid crystal (LC) beam deflector with a microblazed grating produced by stepping photolithography and reactive ion etching (RIE) was reported. A homogeneously aligned nematic liquid crystal (NLC) materials are filled inside the microcavity of blazed grating, and sandwiched between two glass plates. An indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrode is deposited on it to provide the beam steering capability. Our LC-micro blazed grating device gives a high diffractive efficiency (about 95%) and a controllable large steering angle over 7.2° (for ne) and 1.7° (for no), respectively. It was found that this type of non-mechanical beam steering without any moving parts is ideally suited for applications in optical communication and optical interconnection network.