Liquid crystals in precision optical devices

While the liquid crystal industry is primarily driven by the display industry, increasingly important applications in science and engineering have emerged such as beam steering wavefront modulation and polarization switching and control. We will discuss some of the differences in construction techniques needed to produce a precision optical device rather than a flat panel display along with development work being carried out at Meadowlark Optics in some of the above areas. These include polarization switches capable of greater than 5000:1 contrast and high efficiency beam steering for precision interferometer gauges.