Liquid crystal (LC) smart windows with adjustable reflectivity have been gradually applied in green and intelligent building materials for energy saving needs, but their applications are limited by their fundamental defects.
We demonstrate a laser beam combiner based on four photo-patterned Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) phase gratings, which is compact and has high diffraction efficiency for incident circularly polarized light. The nematic liquid crystal mixture E7 is used as anisotropic material, and the thickness of the layer is controlled by spacers. The beam combiner can bring two parallel laser beams closer to each other while remaining parallel. This work shows the potential to realize components based on flat optical LC devices.
One-step formation of infrared reflection microsheets via local photo-induced in situ polymerization