All-Optical Switching and Filtering Based on Liquid Crystals and Photosensitive Composite Organic Materials

We present our recent experimental results on guided wave devices that can be switched and tuned by optical driving signals. Two different waveguide structures recently implemented are reported. The first one uses liquid crystals (LCs) as a core in a SiO2/Si V-groove and optical signals whose power is in the order of few milliwatts to control propagation. The second structure is an all-optical tunable filter that includes photosensitive composite materials. The latter combines the simple and low-cost ion exchange waveguide technology with a composite LC methyl red azo-dye photosensitive compound to obtain full optical tunability. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.