Enhanced efficiency of electric field tunability in photonic liquid crystal fibers doped with gold nanoparticles

In this paper, we present our recent research results on light propagation in photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) infiltrated with a 6CHBT nematic liquid crystal (LC) doped with 2-nm gold nanoparticles (NPs) with a concentration in the range of 0.01 - 0.5% wt. Electro-optical response times and thermal tuning of the investigated samples have been studied in detail. We have observed up to similar to 80% decrease of rise times for different concentrations of gold NPs in the LC. Moreover, a significant reduction of the Freedericksz threshold voltage (up to 60%) has been observed for samples with higher concentrations of 2-nm gold NPs in 6CHBT. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement