Optical Switch Based on Electro-Holographic Liquid Crystal Polymer Bragg Grating

"Today's military aircraft and aerospace systems employ optical networks for data transmission. Data is bottlenecked in switching, which is currently performed by slow, bulky, heavy optomechanical methods. Fast electro-optical switches have been suggestedas replacements, but these tend to have large insertion losses and low extinction ratios. The U.S. Navy is seeking a high-speed, low-loss, high extinction ratio optical switch for its optical networks. To address this need, Physical Optics Corporation(POC) proposes to develop a novel optical switch based on liquid crystal polymer holographic Bragg grating nanotechnology. This concept is superior to existing switches in that it can switch in under 25 microseconds, has insertion loss below 1 dB,exhibits an extinction ratio above 50 dB, is nonmechanical, and scales to large array sizes. It can be designed to be narrowband for wavelength division multiplexing or broadband for greater system compatibility. The proposed optical switch technology iscommercially attractive because it is based on mature volume holographic and liquid crystal/polymer nanotechnology. In Phase I, POC will design, fabricate and test the proposed optical switch technology, and demonstrate its feasibility by analyticalcalculation, computer modeling, and experimental demonstration. In Phase II, an advanced prototype will be fabricated and field tested. POC expects this unique switch to open a new market for ra