Abstract

In recent years the discovery and subsequent research into photorefractive-like gratings in liquid crystals (LCs) has opened new possibilities for their applications in beam processing and holographic storage. The fabrication of photorefractive LCs is based on adding photoconducting sensitisers, such as a dye or fullerene¹, to the transparent LC matrix. In dye-doped samples, light-induced reorientation leads to the formation of strong refractive index gratings. Optical reorientation of LC molecules can also be significantly influenced by surface mediated anchoring. In samples, with a special polymer coating applied to their surfaces, anchoring contributes to the creation of permanent patterns².

© 2000 IEEE