Rotatable diffractive gratings based on hybrid-aligned cholesteric liquid crystals

This work proposes a thermally rotatable grating that is based on hybrid-aligned cholesteric liquid crystals (HBA-cholesteric LCs). Experiments reveal that the HBA-cholesteric texture has a uniformly striped domain, which forms a grating, when the ratio of the cell gap to the helical pitch (d/p) is in the range of 2≤d/p≤3. The stripe direction of the HBA-cholesteric grating is predicted by the proposed vertically aligned LC layer model. The stripe direction of the HBA-cholesteric grating rotates continuously under thermal and electrical effects. Furthermore, the HBA-cholesteric grating has a larger rotational angle under the thermal effect (∼101°) than under the electrical effect (∼48°). Potential applications of the proposed thermally rotatable cholesteric grating for beam steering devices are emphasized.