Research progress of cholesteric liquid crystals with broadband reflection characteristics in application of intelligent optical modulation materials

Cholesteric liquid crystals（CLCs） have recently sparked an enormous amount of interest in the development of soft matter materials due to their unique ability to self-organize into a helical supra-molecular architecture and their excellent selective reflection of light based on the Bragg relationship.Nowadays,by the virtue of building the self-organized nanostructures with pitch gradient or non-uniform pitch distribution,extensive work has already been performed to obtain CLC films with a broad reflection band.Based on authors＇ many years＇ research experience,this critical review systematically summarizes the physical and optical background of the CLCs with broadband reflection characteristics,methods to obtain broadband reflection of CLCs,as well as the application in the field of intelligent optical modulation materials.Combined with the research status and the advantages in the field,the important basic and applied scientific problems in the research direction are also introduced.

Photo-Corrosion of CdSe Film Electrode by Electrochemical Modulation Reflectance Spectrum

The photo-corrosion of electrodeposited polycrystalline CdSe electrode was inhibited effectively by coating a thin layer of the conductive polyaniline （PAN） film. The relation between the performance and internal band structure of such film-covered PAN/CdSe electrode was studied by the electrochemical modulation reflectance spectrum （EMRS）. EMRS of both CdSe and PAN/CdSe electrodes in K4Fe（CN）6/K3Fe（CN）6 solution exhibited typical France-Keidysh oscillations, by which the values of the energy gap and flat band potential were determined. The EMRS results indicated that the energy band structure of CdSe electrode was not changed after coated with PAN film, so that the photoelectrochemical characteristic of PAN/CdSe electrode was rather similar to that of CdSe electrode.

Microwave Reflectometry on HL-2A Tokamak

One of the most important electron density diagnostics, microwave reflectometry, has been developed on many large and medium nuclear fusion devices in recent years . Not only the electron density profiles with high temporal and spatial resolutions, but also the profiles of plasma rotation and turbulence can be obtained with this diagnostic system.

A WDM-PON with DPSK modulated downstream and OOK modulated upstream signals based on symmetric 10 Gbit/s wavelength reused bidirectional reflective SOA

We investigate a wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network(WDM-PON) with centralized lightwave and direct detection. The system is demonstrated for symmetric 10 Gbit/s differential phase-shift keying(DPSK) downstream signals and on-off keying(OOK) upstream signals,respectively. A wavelength reused scheme is employed to carry the upstream data by using a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier(RSOA) as an intensity modulator at the optical network unit(ONU). The constant-intensity property of the DPSK modulation format can keep high extinction ratio(ER) of downstream signal and reduce the crosstalk to the upstream signal. The bit error rate(BER) performance of our scheme shows that the proposed 10 Gbit/s symmetric WDM-PON can achieve error free transmission over 25-km-long fiber transmission with low power penalty.

Measurement of the wavelength modulation indices with selective reflection spectroscopy

The wavelength modulation indices are measured based on harmonic amplitude ratio of 4famp/6famp (4famp and 6famp are the 4- and 6-th harmonic central peak amplitudes correspondingly) with the Doppler-free selective reflection modulation spectroscopy. The experiments for the 6S1/2(F = 4) → 6P3/2(F' = 5) transition of cesium D2 line with 30-MHz linewidth were carried out. The 4f- and 6f-harmonic signals were detected with two digital lock-in amplifiers separately. The maximum error for modulation indices measurement was ±0.1 within the range of m from 3 to 6. The non-linear modulation behaviour of an external cavity diode laser induced by voltage tuning was studied with this method. The method for modulation indices measurement does not require a solid etalon as usual for measuring the wavelength modulation depth and the absorption linewidth correspondingly.

A near-infrared methane detection system using a 1.654 μm wavelength-modulated diode laser

By adopting a distributed feedback laser(DFBL) centered at 1.654 μm, a near-infrared(NIR) methane(CH4) detection system based on tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy(TDLAS) is experimentally demonstrated. A laser temperature control as well as wavelength modulation module is developed to control the laser's operation temperature. The laser's temperature fluctuation can be limited within the range of-0.02—0.02 °C, and the laser's emitting wavelength varies linearly with the temperature and injection current. An open reflective gas sensing probe is realized to double the absorption optical path length from 0.2 m to 0.4 m. Within the detection range of 0—0.01, gas detection experiments were conducted to derive the relation between harmonic amplitude and gas concentration. Based on the Allan deviation at an integral time of 1 s, the limit of detection(Lo D) is decided to be 2.952×10^(-5) with a path length of 0.4 m, indicating a minimum detectable column density of ~1.2×10^(-5) m. Compared with our previously reported NIR CH_4 detection system, this system exhibits some improvement in both optical and electrical structures, including the analogue temperature controller with less software consumption, simple and reliable open reflective sensing probe.