Circularly polarized light generated by photoexcitation of luminophores in glassy liquid-crystal films

S. H. Chen (), D. Katsis, A. W. Schmid, J. C. Mastrangelo, T. Tsutsui and T. N. Blanton
Additional contact information
S. H. Chen: Materials Science Program
D. Katsis: Materials Science Program
A. W. Schmid: Laboratory for Laser Energetics
J. C. Mastrangelo: NSF Center for Photoinduced Charge Transfer, Center for Optoelectronics and Imaging, University of Rochester
T. Tsutsui: Kyushu University
T. N. Blanton: Kodak Research Laboratories

Nature, 1999, vol. 397, issue 6719, 506-508

Abstract: Abstract Optical information processing, display and storage can be accomplished with linearly or circularly polarized light. In passive (non-emitting) devices, linear polarization can be produced by anisotropic absorption of light1, whereas circular polarization has been attained by selective reflection of unpolarized light propagating through a chiral-nematic liquid-crystal film2. Active (light-emitting) devices capable of polarized emission are also needed. In principle, optical and electronic excitation of materials containing uniaxially and helically arranged luminophores should produce linearly and circularly polarized emission, respectively. In practice, the former is easier to achieve and is therefore more technologically advanced3,4,5,6,7,8. Here we report the generation of strongly circularly polarized photoluminescence from films of glass-forming chiral-nematic liquid crystals9 in which are embedded light-emitting dopants. This host material apparently induced alignment of the luminophores to a degree that produces almost pure circular polarization within the 400–420-nm wavelength band of the emitted light. We anticipate that composite films of this sort might find applications within photonic technology such as colour-image projection10 and stereoscopic displays11.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/17343 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6719:d:10.1038_17343

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/17343

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().