Printing of liquid crystal droplets for functional optical elements

This presentation demonstrates the use of drop-on-demand printing for the fabrication of liquid crystal (LC) droplet devices tailored for a range of different applications. The presentation will begin with a demonstration of the printing of different LC inks in the form of nematic LCs and polymer-stabilized chiral nematic LCs. Results are presented to demonstrate how the latter can be printed as arrays to form switchable smart windows with embedded images. We then show how printed nematic LCs can be used to generate optical vortex beams under certain applied voltages and how they can be used to enable single-shot Stokes polarimetry.