Photo-Aligned Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Fork Grating-Mediated Fast Switchable Spiral Phase Contrast Imaging
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Qi Guo; Zidi Zhong; Huijie Zhao; Shijie Wang; Kexin Yan
- Source
- Photonics, Vol 11, Iss 1, p 85 (2024)
- Subject
- ferroelectric liquid crystal
spiral phase contrast imaging
photoalignment
Applied optics. Photonics
TA1501-1820
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 2304-6732
Extensive research has been devoted to spiral phase contrast imaging because of its notable capacity to enhance the edges of both phase and amplitude objects. We demonstrate a setup using ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) fork grating (FG) to enable switchable spiral phase contrast imaging within sub-milli-second responses. This system enables the electrical toggling between images featuring edge enhancement and those without it. The specially designed FLC FG generates a vortex beam while in a diffractive state and transmits a Gaussian beam when in a transmissive state. Using a two-step photo-alignment method, the produced FLC FG exhibits exceptional efficiency at approximately 35% and impressively rapid switching at around 307 μs. By introducing this method, we expand the potential applications of spiral phase contrast imaging, particularly in fields such as bio-sensing and photonics.