PNNL

Abstract

By employing anisotropic fluids and namely liquid crystals, fluid flow becomes an additional degree of freedom in designing optofluidic devices. In this paper, we demonstrate optofluidic liquid crystal devices based on the direct flow of nematic liquid crystals in microfluidic channels. Contrary to previous reports, in the present embodiment we employ the effective phase delay acquired by light travelling through flowing liquid crystal, without analysing the polarisation state of the transmitted light. With this method, we demonstrate the variation in the diffraction pattern of an array of microfluidic channels acting as a grating. We also discuss our recent activities in integrating mechanical oscillators for on-chip peristaltic pumping.