Multichannel Binary-Image and Holographic Display Based on Planar Liquid Crystal Devices

Planar liquid crystal (LC) optics has attracted increasing attention with the development of photoalignment technology. However, current LC devices suffer from single optical manipulation, which hinders the implementation of the device's multifunctionality and light integration. Here, combining the orientation degeneracy and rotation multiplexing scheme, several LC elements are proposed for multichannel image displays through a simple single-cell design. The first design shows the gray-image multiplexing at the sample surface, which displays two independent binary gray images without crosstalk in two information channels. The second design shows that the amplitude and phase of incident light can be manipulated separately, and a far-field holographic image is further integrated into the LC device to achieve tri-channel display. Both the Fraunhofer and Fresnel holograms are considered, and the experiment results agree well with the theoretical designs. Furthermore, the electrical tunability of the LC molecule is demonstrated, and the images can be turned on and off by controlling the voltage. The proposed strategy significantly increases the information capacity without the cost of complex design and fabrication and has promising prospects in multichannel image display, optical anticounterfeiting, encryption, etc.

Automated summary

Planar liquid crystal (LC) optics has made progress in achieving multifunctional and integrated light manipulation through the proposal of several LC elements. The designs include gray-image multiplexing for independent binary gray images and manipulation of amplitude and phase for the integration of a holographic image, resulting in a tri-channel display. The proposed strategy also demonstrates the electrical tunability of the LC molecule for image control.