Direct-write orientation of charge-transfer liquid crystals enables polarization-based coding and encryption

Abstract

Optical polarizers encompass a class of anisotropic materials that pass-through discrete orientations of light and are found in wide-ranging technologies, from windows and glasses to cameras, digital displays and photonic devices. The wire-grids, ordered surfaces, and aligned nanomaterials used to make polarized films cannot be easily reconfigured once aligned, limiting their use to stationary cross-polarizers in, for example, liquid crystal displays. Here we describe a supramolecular material set and patterning approach where the polarization angle in stand-alone films can be precisely defined at the single pixel level and reconfigured following initial alignment. This capability enables new routes for non-binary information storage, retrieval, and intrinsic encryption, and it suggests future technologies such as photonic chips that can be reconfigured using non-contact patterning.