Universal soft matter template for photonic applications
Abstract
A new class of high efficiency photonic devices can be realized by combining the optical properties of anisotropic, soft, composite materials with re-configurability, owing to a specific confining geometry and to high response properties. A light sculptured polymeric template is used to micro/nanoconfine a wide selection of organic elements, stabilized through self-organization processes at the nanoscale. We exploit a general purpose method, used to align several kinds of liquid crystalline materials: an excursus of well known optical, electro-optical and all-optical effects is reported, which confirms the capability of our polymeric template to induce self-organization, without the need of any kind of surface chemistry.