Laser speckle reduction using polymer-stabilized liquid crystals doped with Ag nanowires

Xin Jiang; Weilong Zhou; Wei Wang; Zichun Le; Wen Dong

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20934

Laser speckle reduction using polymer-stabilized liquid crystals doped with Ag nanowires

Heliyon. 2023 Oct 13;9(10):e20934. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20934. eCollection 2023 Oct.

Authors

Xin Jiang¹, Weilong Zhou¹, Wei Wang¹, Zichun Le¹, Wen Dong²

Affiliations

¹ College of Science, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, PR China.
² College of Environment, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, PR China.

Abstract

Miniaturized and pure static devices are expected to be used in laser-imaging systems for speckle reduction. In this study, a pure static device based on polymer-stabilized liquid crystal (PSLC) doped with Ag nanowires was developed to effectively suppress laser speckles. The concentrations of the polymer and Ag nanowires in the PSLC were optimized, and then the PSLC devices were fabricated. A measurement system was set up to characterize the electro-optical properties of the fabricated PSLC devices. Subsequently, a laser projection system was built to demonstrate the speckle-reduction performance. Moreover, the degree of scattering and response time of the developed PSLC devices were investigated and discussed. A PSLC doped with 0.02 wt% Ag nanowires and 3 wt% polymer having a device size of 2 × 2 × 0.1 cm³ was demonstrated to produce a speckle-reduction efficiency of 51.4 % under very low driving voltages. The experimental results verified effectiveness and superiority of the developed speckle reduction method based on PSLC doped with Ag nanowires.

Keywords: Ag nanowires; Degree of scattering; Laser speckle reduction; Liquid crystal devices; Polymer-stabilized liquid crystals; Response time.