Design of Smart Materials using Liquid Crystallinity

Abstract

The arrays of nanostructures on a surface, called metasurfaces, have made advances in flat optics because of their potential to display programmable hologram and miniaturize optical components. Because previous metasurface systems are passive, however, their practical applications have been impeded. Accordingly, recent efforts have focused on the realization of active metasurfaces via using, for example, phase-change materials, mechanical actuations, and chemical reactions, but their full potential has yet to be realized. Here, we propose a simple and versatile design approach to enable dynamically tunable metahologram by leveraging unique features of liquid crystals (LCs) [1-4]. We demonstrate the new class of active metahologram, a thin layer of LC integrated with multiplexing metasurface, to autonomously sense a programmed stimulus and dynamically switch the “full-color” holographic images. This attribute provides insight into the rational design of interactive meta-hologram display enabling multifunctional active devices. This work was supported by the Korea National Research Foundation (NRF-2022M3C1A3081312).