Wide Optical Beam Steering LCOS Device for Solid-State LiDAR Applications

We demonstrate one-dimensional beam steering in a liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) device with a large birefringence (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> = 0.2028 at 1550 nm) of the liquid crystal (LC) mixture. The experimental analysis of the optical beam steering angles at different LCOS grating periods is reported. A maximum beam steering angle of ±15.6° is measured for the fine grating pitch of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.6 \mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1^{st}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-order diffraction efficiency (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\eta _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) of 2.28%. Also, the experimental results obtained were verified with the grating equation and numerical simulation. The wide optical beam steering capabilities of our fabricated LCOS device show great potential applications in solid-state LiDAR for future autonomous vehicles.