Fig. 5: A zwitterionic-doped chiral nematic LC speckle reducer (LC-SR) for holography.

a Schematic of the experimental assembly used to test the LC-SR with the laser illumination of a thin-film hologram. The system consisted of a He-Ne laser, a variable attenuator (VA), a ground glass diffuser (GGD), the LC-SR and a combination of lenses to expand the beam to illuminate the hologram. the beam is then transported through a positive lens and then projected on a hologram. A CCD camera was positioned at the locations VP1 and VP2 so that the mug and the eraser could be viewed from different angles. b Image of the hologram when no LC-SR was included in the system and when the CCD camera was placed at VP1 (positioned high up and at 80 cm from the hologram). c Image taken from VP1 when the LC-SR was inserted and operated at the optimum electric field conditions. d Image captured on the CCD when it was located at VP2 (positioned low down and close to the hologram) with no LC-SR included in the system. e Image captured from VP2 when the LC-SR was inserted and run at the optimum electric field conditions. The best performing LC-SR was employed for this demonstration (BL006 + 3.0 wt.% R5011 + 0.5 wt.% Reichardt’s dye, d = 40.0 μm operated at a temperature of 50 °C—corresponding to a speckle contrast of C = 0.07)