Electro-optical device based on photonic structure with a dual-frequency cholesteric liquid crystal.

An electrically tunable and polarizer-free photonic device is developed using a one-dimensional photonic crystal (PC) infiltrated with dual-frequency cholesteric liquid crystal (DFCLC) as a defect layer. The PC/DFCLC hybrid cell allows the employment of various frequency-modulated voltage pulses to regulate defect modes and switch between stable states. This device possesses many alluring features such as rapid bistable switching, intensity tunability, and wavelength tunability in the defect modes, and it requires no polarizers. It can be used as a filter, fast-speed shutter, or light-intensity modulator.