Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) is a widely used electrode material for liquid crystal cell applications because of its transparency in the visible spectral range and its high electrical conductivity. Important examples of applications are displays and optical phase modulators. We report on subwavelength periodic structuring and precise laser cutting of 150 nm thick indium-tin-oxide films on glass substrates, which were deposited by magnetron reactive DC-sputtering from an indiumtin target in a low-pressure oxygen atmosphere. In order to obtain nanostructured electrodes laser-induced periodic surface structures with a period of approximately 100 nm were generated using tightly focused high-repetition rate sub-15 femtosecond pulsed Ti:sapphire laser light, which was scanned across the sample by galvanometric mirrors. Three-dimensional spacers were produced by multiphoton photopolymerization in ma-N 2410 negative-tone photoresist spin-coated on top of the ITO layers. The nanostructured electrodes were aligned in parallel to set up an electrically switchable nematic liquid crystal cell.

Date Published: 12 March 2015
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9351, Laser-based Micro- and Nanoprocessing IX, 93511O (12 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2076946

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9351:
Laser-based Micro- and Nanoprocessing IX
Udo Klotzbach; Kunihiko Washio; Craig B. Arnold, Editor(s)