PDLCs consist of liquid crystal droplets that are dispersed in a solid polymer matrix. The resulting material is a sort of "swiss cheese" polymer with liquid crystal droplets filling in the holes. These tiny droplets (a few microns across for practical applications) are responsible for the unique behavior of the material. By changing the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules with an elect...

Recent advancements in our high-speed multi-level (analog) 512x512 liquid crystal Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) will be presented. These advancements include smaller pixel pitch, greatly improved optical efficiency, and higher speed operation. The new VLSI SLM can utilize Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (FLC) or Nematic Liquid Crystal (NLC) to achieve phase-only, amplitude-only, and phase-amplitud...

We have fabricated electrically switchable holographic gratings, using Polaroid Corporation's DMP-128 photopolymer filled with the nematic liquid crystal E7. It is shown that a coupled-wave theory that includes the effects of the birefringence of the liquid crystal must be used to explain the diffraction properties of these anisotropic volume gratings. Furthermore, a detailed comparison of theo...