325-nm Laser System for Robust Liquid-Crystal Device Fabrication

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Liquid crystals -- a material with both liquid and crystalline properties -- are widely used in the current century's technologies, e.g. in all electronics displays. They are regularly used in advanced research laboratories, in particular, in optics and photonics laboratories. Having electro--optical features with the possibility to control the optical polarization and phase with an external electric field makes them an excellent candidate for optical beam shaping. In my laboratory, I have successfully designed and fabricated liquid- crystal devices to custom tailor optical beams. These devices are now widely used by my local and international colleagues in a plethora of research disciplines, ranging from microscopy, quantum sensing and quantum communication to fundamental research in physics. With the current instrumentation at my facility (the only one in Canada), the lifetime of the fabricated devices is limited to a few months, after which they are unusable, wasting valuable resources. This is due to the fact that the current laser for photoalignment (a fundamental procedure in the preparation of these devices) at an improper wavelength, which causes an imperfect "fixation" of the liquid crystal molecules on the sample substrate. To overcome these issues, I am requesting funding to purchase a laser source with specific properties (325 nm wavelength and >100 mW power) for the fabrication of patterned liquid-crystal devices. While the current laser operates at 405 nm, it is known that this difference in wavelength has a significant impact on the device lifetime. The access to this instrumentation will allow fabrication of LC devices with years of durability. Such a significant improvement is essential to speed up research activities and continue to foster both local and international collaborations, and training HQP in my laboratory, putting the University of Ottawa and Canada in a leading position for the fabrication of custom liquid- crystal devices.