Soft Periodic Microstructures
Containing Liquid Crystals
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Abstract
An empty polymeric structure has been realized by combining
a high
precision level optical holographic setup and a selective microfluidic
etching process. The distinctive features of the realized periodic
microstructure enabled aligning several kinds of liquid crystal (LC)
compounds, without the need of any kind of surface chemistry or functionalization.
In particular, it has been possible to exploit light sensitive LCs
for the fabrication of all-optical devices, cholesteric and ferroelectric
LCs for ultrafast electro-optical switches, and a common LC for a
two-dimensional periodic structure with high anisotropy. All-optical
and electro-optical experiments, performed for investigating the samples
in terms of switching voltages and response times, confirm good performances
of the realized devices