Waveguide couplers based on HPDLC for see-through applications: initiator optimization

Abstract

Polymer nanocomposites are designed and engineered on a nanometer scale with versatile applications including optics and photonics. During the last two decades, different photopolymerizable nano-compounds were introduced and developed to modify polymer properties. In this sense, inorganic and organic nanoparticles have been introduced to increase the refractive index modulation and/or to reduce the shrinkage. Liquid crystal polymer composites have been added to the category of active photopolymer materials with an electrically switchable option. Nowadays, in the design of smart glasses some problems remain on the table, like power consumption, the limitation of the resolution, the wide field of view, etc. The inclusion of holographic optical element has provided some possible solutions. In particular the photopolymers have been reported a good system to bring the photons produced in the image creation to the eye. Our group proposed an alternative scheme using transmission holographic elements. The fabrication architecture was tested with different photopolymers in order to optimize their chemical composition, and we proposed three schemes adapted to each material properties. In this paper we study the influence of the initiator concentration, for Holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal photopolymer, on the refractive index modulation and on the tunable properties of these holographic optical elements.