Development of a liquid crystal laser using a simple cubic liquid crystalline blue phase platform

Abstract

A liquid crystal laser using a polymer-stabilized simple cubic blue phase (BPII) platform has been scarcely reported because the polymer stabilization of a BPII is relatively difficult compared to that of a body-centered-cubic BP (BPI). In this study, we succeeded in fabricating a dye-doped polymer-stabilized BPII laser with wide operating-temperature ranges over 15 °C including room temperature. A narrow and sharp single laser peak with a full width at half maximum of approximately 2 nm was derived from the photonic band edge effect of the BPII-distributed feedback optical resonator. As a result, the laser emission was a circularly polarized light, which matched the chirality of the proposed pure BPII.