Miller Sawyer, Jiang Linan, Tu Xingzhou, Pau Stanley
Appl Opt. 2021 Feb 20;60(6):1500-1507. doi: 10.1364/AO.416845.
The patternability and guest-host interaction with dichroic dye and C-plate liquid crystal polymer (LCP) materials are investigated, and the optical properties of a thin film C-plate retarder and polarizer are studied and compared with theory. The C-plate retarder is a waveplate made of a uniaxial LCP where the optical axis of the LCP is parallel to the surface normal of the optic. No retardance is observed at a normal angle of incidence and retardance grows as the angle of incidence increases. The C-plate polarizer is a C-plate retarder with LCP as the host and a dichroic dye as the guest. The linear diattenuation (LD) of the linear polarizer is zero at a normal angle of incidence and grows with an increasing angle of incidence. Both the C-plate retarder and polarizer can be patterned with minimum feature size down to 2 µm by using ultraviolet photolithography and plasma etching. A planarization process is also developed to deposit a cover layer on top of the pattern to reduce optical loss and to serve as a barrier for subsequent layers.
研究了与二向色性染料和C板液晶聚合物（LCP）材料的图案化能力及客体-主体相互作用，并对薄膜C板延迟器和偏振器的光学特性进行了研究，并与理论进行了比较。C板延迟器是一种由单轴LCP制成的波片，其中LCP的光轴与光学器件的表面法线平行。在正入射角度下未观察到延迟，且延迟随着入射角的增加而增大。C板偏振器是以LCP为主体、二向色性染料为客体的C板延迟器。线性偏振器的线性衰减（LD）在正入射角度下为零，并随着入射角的增加而增大。通过使用紫外光刻和等离子体蚀刻，C板延迟器和偏振器都可以被图案化，最小特征尺寸可达2 µm。还开发了一种平面化工艺，在图案顶部沉积覆盖层，以减少光学损耗，并作为后续层的阻挡层。
