Tunable birefringent filters using liquid crystals

Abstract

Liquid crystal materials may allow the construction of rapidly tunable filters with a variety of bandwidths. These filters would be built as birefringence filters which use the electro-optic properties of liquid crystals to achieve tunability. The most common liquid crystal device is the twisted-nematic cell, but the device of interest to us is called a 'flat-field' or non-twisted cell.