文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Programmable orientation of blue phase soft photonic crystal

作者：Zhang, Yuxian[1];Zheng, Zhi-Gang[1]

机构：[1]East China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Phys, Shanghai 200237, Peoples R China

年份：2024

卷号：125

期号：20

外文期刊名：APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS

收录：;EI(收录号：20244717395760);WOS:【SCI-EXPANDED(收录号:WOS:001357969300019)】；

基金：This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2022YFA1203700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. T2488302, 62005008, 62035008, 62275081, 22305079, and 52272109), the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Scientific Committee of Shanghai (2021-01-07-00-02-E00107), and the "Shuguang Program" of Shanghai Education Development Foundation and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (21SG29).

语种：英文

外文关键词：Crystal orientation - Crystalline materials - Optical signal processing - Photonic crystals - Photonic devices - Photonic integrated circuits - Photonic integration technology - Photonics - Photons

摘要：Understanding the structure formation and its underlying physical mechanism is a fundamental topic in condensed matter systems, with both academic and practical implications. Soft matter is playing a remarkable role in current era of information explosion, demonstrating enormous potential in integrated functional photonics. As unique soft photonic crystals with cubic symmetries, not only liquid crystalline blue phases (BPs) have circularly polarized selective reflection and ultra-fast electro-optical response, but also their three-dimensional photonic structures increase degrees-of-freedom for multiplexed optical modulation. In the thriving field of soft-matter-based photonics, precise and programmable engineering of BP crystal orientation is of vital importance for planar optical elements, which remains a challenging task due to the complexity of the nucleation process as well as the interaction between the BP building blocks and the boundary conditions. Aiming to gain a comprehensive understanding of how to tailor the orientation of BP crystals for the photonic applications of next generation, here we discuss the solutions for uniformity improvement and orientation control of BP crystals, about which a few of examples in combination with the underlying mechanisms are explained. In addition, the remaining challenges and the efforts that are expected are also reviewed. We expect this work provides a deeper understanding of phase transitions and resulting structures in soft crystals, which may open encouraging perspectives for their applications in photonics, biosensing, interfacial, and chemical engineering.