Circularly-polarized, large-angle reflective deflectors based on periodically patterned cholesteric liquid crystals

AbstractPatterned cholesteric liquid crystals enable the fabrication of circular-polarization sensitive, reflective diffractive optical elements based on Bragg reflection. Here we report the fabrication of large-angle reflective deflector, which show deflection angles as large as 48.9°. The devices are fabricated by polarization holography, whereby two orthogonal circular polarized beams are superimposed on a photoalignment layer to create a linear modulation of the orientational easy axis. The devices show high circular-polarization extinction ratios, making them potentially useful as functional reflectors and polarization splitters.