Enhanced photorefractive effect in liquid crystal structures co-doped with semiconductor quantum dots and metallic nanoparticles

In this paper, we present strong enhancement of optical properties of hybrid liquid crystal structures functionalized with metallic and semiconductor nanoparticles. Several experiments done in two wave mixing experimental set-up have reported that diffraction efficiency can be improved by up to 14 times by introducing nanoparticles of cadmium selenide or gold into the photoconducting polymer adjacent to the liquid crystal layer. Our research may open up a possible route for the development of faster and more efficient holographic materials which can be used in dynamic data processing systems. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3659485]