Analysis of a vertically aligned liquid-crystal on silicon microdisplay for photonics applications

Abstract

We present the characterization results for an analogically addressed vertically aligned liquid crystal on silicon microdisplay (VA-LCoS). We show that it covers more than 360o phase modulation range at 1550 nm, and that in the visible the range available enables the generation of multiorder DOEs. There are basically no studies dealing with the characterization of vertically aligned high resolution LCoS devices, since the ones typically found in the literature and commercially available correspond to the parallel aligned. We have also verified that the microdisplay used in this work is free from flicker, which is a very interesting feature for application where the phase stability is of the utmost importance. The results shown here represent a first step in the work underway oriented to the generation of programmable DOEs for telecommunication applications (C-band) and for the visible spectrum.