Quick Shot

A new photoalignment process is being developed to produce liquid crystal (LC) devices. These devices will have substantially higher 1054-nm laser damage thresholds (between 30–40 J/cm², at 1 ns) than those currently deployed in the OMEGA laser (e.g., LC wave plates ) that use buffed Nylon alignment coatings. Marisa Vargas is shown installing fused silica plates into a Brewster’s angle pile-of-plates polarizer assembly that will be used to generate linearly polarized UV light for fabrication of large-aperture, photoaligned liquid crystal devices.