Off-axis reflective phase-only holograms with chiral liquid crystal

The growing demand for holography and its wide-ranging applications necessitate advancements to make this technology more accessible and adaptable to modern technological requirements. Nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) enable holographic projection by exploiting the geometric phase of light through carefully designed phase patterns. However, NLC-based holography faces challenges, particularly in terms of projection quality and the presence of zero-order leakage—a bright spot that overlaps the reconstructed image. The efficiency of the reconstructed image is strictly related to the thickness of the NLC layer, which is challenging to control with high precision. In this work, we use chiral liquid crystal (CLC) to fabricate reflective holograms. To address the issue of leakage waves overlapping the reconstructed image, we propose an interference-based fabrication approach. This approach combines the phase pattern of the hologram with a diffraction grating by interfering a plane wave with a tailored wavefront precisely matching the hologram’s phase pattern. As a result, the image is reconstructed away from the zero-order reflection, and the leakage overlapping with the reconstructed image is reduced significantly.