Otón E, Morawiak P, Gaładyk K, Otón JM, Piecek W. Fast self-assembly of macroscopic blue phase 3D photonic crystals.
OPTICS EXPRESS 2020;
28:18202-18211. [PMID:
32680021 DOI:
10.1364/oe.393197]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2020] [Accepted: 05/13/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Blue phase (BP) liquid crystals are materials with unique self-assembling properties. They can be regarded as 3D photonic crystals as they organize in 3D cubic structures with sub-micrometer range periodicity and display selective optical bandgaps. Yet, the obtained BP crystals are usually polycrystalline or micrometer-sized monocrystals. Producing large BP monocrystals has proven to be a challenging and time-consuming endeavor, due to BP crystal growth being notoriously slow and the complex requirements for achieving a reasonable size and monocrystalline structure. In this work we successfully obtained large BP monocrystals (single lattice orientation) by fast self-assembly. Our fabrication process, which is about 100× faster than in previous reported research, uses relatively simple techniques, therefore demonstrating a considerable improvement towards the manufacturing of 3D photonic crystals.
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