Symmetry Breaking Induced Pockels Effect in a Tilted Field Switching BPIII Cell

Abstract

In this study, we propose driving the amorphous blue phase III (BPIII) with a tilted electric field to enhance or magnify its inherent linear electro-optical properties. The electro-optical properties of in-plane-switching (IPS) BPIII and tilted-field-switching (TFS) BPIII cells are compared here. According to the change in the induced birefringence with varying the strength of the electric field in the TFS-BPIII cell, the Kerr effect occurs in the low electric field and the Pockels effect dominates in the high electric field. In addition, the transmittance of the TFS-BPIII cell depends on the polarity of the applied field from 1 Hz to 10 kHz. It also results in the rise time of the TFS-BPIII cell being almost half of that of the IPS-BPIII cell. These experimental results and discussion allowed us to unravel the mystery of the amorphous BPIII step by step and provide the potential application of BPIII in photonic devices.