Polarization sensitive performance of one dimensional photonic crystal filters with a liquid crystal layer

A tunable photonic crystal (PC) filter is proposed with the twisted nematic (TN) liquid crystal (LC) as a defect layer. The polarization sensitive performance and the eigenmodes are analyzed. The results show that there are two kinds of transmission modes, namely o and e, when the voltage is low. The different modes can be selected by rotating the filter axially. The e mode shifts toward the shorter wavelength side as the applied voltage increases. Then the peaks of two modes merge into each other and the polarization sensitive performance disappears. The photonic band gap is insensitive to the voltage. The tunable range of the filter is 53 nm.