Reconfigurable fabrication of scattering-free polymer network liquid crystal prism/grating/lens

We report a simple reconfigurable printing method for fabricating submillisecond-response and scattering-free polymer network liquid crystal photonic devices, such as prism, grating, and lens. To suppress light scattering in the visible region, we reduce the domain sizes by controlling polymer concentration, selecting a high viscosity liquid crystal (LC) host, and performing UV curing at a low temperature. To demonstrate the configurability, we printed a LC micro-prism array with similar to 300-mu m feature size and a circular lens with 1.3-mm radius without any pre-patterned templates. This reconfigurable printing technique enables fast design iterations and should have widespread applications for fabricating display and photonic devices. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4802919]