3D printed liquid crystal-based materials for tunable photonics and information encryption (Invited Paper)

The advancement of photonics and cryptography will be fostered by the development of new materials that can introduce advanced functionalities in integrated photonics and secure information storage. To make them relevant for these applications, they must be integrated at the nano- and micro-scale. This is possible by the lithographic technique of two-photon direct laser writing (2P-DLW), which is capable of 3D printing polymeric materials with nanometric resolution and high speed. By combining 2P-DLW and liquid crystal-based materials, we demonstrate 3D-printed microstructures for reconfigurable linear and non-linear photonics [1] and secure information encoding [2]. References [1] De Bellis, I., Martella, D., Parmeggiani, C., Wiersma, D.S. and Nocentini, S., 2023. Adv Funct Mater, p.2213162. [2] Donato, S., Nocentini, S., Martella, D., Kolagatla, S., Wiersma, D.S., Parmeggiani, C., Delaney, C., Florea, L., 2024, Small, 20, 2306802.