Photorefractive Amplification of Dynamic Light Signals Using Photoconductive Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

The photorefractive effect in photoconductive ferroelectric liquid crystal blends containing photoconductive chiral compounds was investigated. Terthiophene compounds possessing chiral structures were mixed with an achiral smectic C liquid crystal mixture. The blends exhibit the ferroelectric chiral smectic C phase. The photorefractivity of the liquid crystal blends was investigated by two-beam coupling experiments. The photoconductive ferroelectric liquid crystal blends prepared in this study exhibited a large gain coefficient of over 1200 cm(-1) and a fast response time shorter than 1 ms. Amplification of an moving optical image signal of over 30 fps using the photorefractive ferroelectric liquid crystal was demonstrated.