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New Advances in Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Optical Materials

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A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Simulation and Design".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 8687

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Prof. Dr. Jorge Francés Monllor

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Guest Editor

Physics, Systems Engineering and Signal Theory, University of Alicante, San vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain
Interests: numerical analysis; computational optimization; nonlinear optics; HPDLCs; polymers; anisotropic media; finite-difference time-domain method; diffraction; holography

Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Abdulhalim

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Electro-Optics and Photonics Engineering and the Ilse-Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel
Interests: plasmonic biosensors; nanophotonic devices; liquid crystal optics and devices; spectropolarimetric imaging; interference microscopy; biomedical optics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, “New Advances in Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis of Optical Materials”, will address advances in numerical simulation, theoretical analysis, and characterization of optical materials. The impact of numerical simulation on different branches of science has seen a dramatic increase in the past decades. The rising of the computational power of modern CPUs and parallelism in both software and hardware has permitted facing new problems that were unaffordable in the past. As a result, numerical simulation and modeling have become a useful tool that complements experimental techniques and helps science and innovation to increase the performance and reliability of new products and services. The study of complex materials such as liquid crystals, polymers, metamaterials, and complex phenomena (e.g., nonlinearities, anisotropy, among others) have been dramatically improved due to these new methods. Their accuracy and the potential to predict and interpret experimental and analytical results have permitted addressing new applications and increasing knowledge in complex phenomena. This Special Issue is focused on recent contributions in the development of numerical methods and modeling applied to Materials Science in the field of optics. It is my pleasure to invite you to submit your work in the form of original research articles or reviews. Potential areas and applications include but are not limited to the following:

Areas:

Finite-difference models;
Analytical and approximated solutions for optical media;
High-performance and optimization solutions for demanding problems;

Applications:

Liquid crystals;
Polymers;
Nanomaterials;
Holography;
Nonlinear materials;
Biosensors;
Diffractive optical elements.

Prof.Dr. Jorge Francés Monllor
Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Abdulahim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Computer modeling
Optical properties
Nonlinear optics
High-performance computing
Numerical simulation
Finite difference analysis (FDA)
Optical polymers
Diffractive optics

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1257 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Precise-Integration Time-Domain Formulation for Optical Periodic Media

by Joan Josep Sirvent-Verdú, Jorge Francés, Andrés Márquez, Cristian Neipp, Mariela Álvarez, Daniel Puerto, Sergi Gallego and Inmaculada Pascual

Materials 2021, 14(24), 7896; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14247896 - 20 Dec 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1601

Abstract

A numerical formulation based on the precise-integration time-domain (PITD) method for simulating periodic media is extended for overcoming the Courant-Friedrich-Levy (CFL) limit on the time-step size in a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation. In this new method, the periodic boundary conditions are implemented, permitting the simulation of a wide range of periodic optical media, i.e., gratings, or thin-film filters. Furthermore, the complete tensorial derivation for the permittivity also allows simulating anisotropic periodic media. Numerical results demonstrate that PITD is reliable and even considering anisotropic media can be competitive compared to traditional FDTD solutions. Furthermore, the maximum allowable time-step size has been demonstrated to be much larger than that of the CFL limit of the FDTD method, being a valuable tool in cases in which the steady-state requires a large number of time-steps. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Optical Materials)

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14 pages, 5244 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Grating Theory Approach to Optics of Nanocomposites

by Subhajit Bej, Toni Saastamoinen, Yuri P. Svirko and Jari Turunen

Materials 2021, 14(21), 6359; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14216359 - 24 Oct 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1796

Abstract

Nanocomposites, i.e., materials comprising nano-sized entities embedded in a host matrix, can have tailored optical properties with applications in diverse fields such as photovoltaics, bio-sensing, and nonlinear optics. Effective medium approaches such as Maxwell-Garnett and Bruggemann theories, which are conventionally used for modeling the optical properties of nanocomposites, have limitations in terms of the shapes, volume fill fractions, sizes, and types of the nanoentities embedded in the host medium. We demonstrate that grating theory, in particular the Fourier Eigenmode Method, offers a viable alternative. The proposed technique based on grating theory presents nanocomposites as periodic structures composed of unit-cells containing a large and random collection of nanoentities. This approach allows us to include the effects of the finite wavelength of light and calculate the nanocomposite characteristics regardless of the morphology and volume fill fraction of the nano-inclusions. We demonstrate the performance of our approach by calculating the birefringence of porous silicon, linear absorption spectra of silver nanospheres arranged on a glass substrate, and nonlinear absorption spectra for a layer of silver nanorods embedded in a host polymer material having Kerr-type nonlinearity. The developed approach can also be applied to quasi-periodic structures with deterministic randomness or metasurfaces containing a large collection of elements with random arrangements inside their unit cells. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Optical Materials)

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22 pages, 4663 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Helical Nanostructures of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals as Fast Phase Retarders for Spectral Information Extraction Devices: A Comparison with the Nematic Liquid Crystal Phase Retarders

by Marwan J. AbuLeil, Doron Pasha, Isaac August, Evgeny P. Pozhidaev, Vadim A. Barbashov, Timofey P. Tkachenko, Artemy V. Kuznetsov and Ibrahim Abdulhalim

Materials 2021, 14(19), 5540; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14195540 - 24 Sep 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2094

Abstract

Extraction of spectral information using liquid crystal (LC) retarders has recently become a topic of great interest because of its importance for creating hyper- and multispectral images in a compact and inexpensive way. However, this method of hyperspectral imaging requires thick LC-layer retarders (50 µm–100 µm and above) to obtain spectral modulation signals for reliable signal reconstruction. This makes the device extremely slow in the case of nematic LCs (NLCs), since the response time of NLCs increases proportionally to the square of the LC-layer thickness, which excludes fast dynamic processes monitoring. In this paper, we explore two approaches for solving the speed problem: the first is based on the use of faster nanospiral ferroelectric liquid crystals as an alternative to NLCs, and the second is based on using a passive multiband filter and focuses on multispectral extraction rather than hyperspectral. A detailed comparative study of nematic and ferroelectric devices is presented. The study is carried out using a 9-spectral bands passive spectral filter, covering the visible and near-infrared ranges. We propose the concept of multispectral rather than hyperspectral extraction, where a small number of wavelengths are sufficient for specific applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Optical Materials)

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14 pages, 2181 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Accurate, Efficient and Rigorous Numerical Analysis of 3D H-PDLC Gratings

by Jorge Francés, Sergio Bleda, Daniel Puerto, Sergi Gallego, Andrés Márquez, Cristian Neipp, Inmaculada Pascual and Augusto Beléndez

Materials 2020, 13(17), 3725; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13173725 - 23 Aug 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2132

Abstract

This work presents recent results derived from the rigorous modelling of holographic polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (H-PDLC) gratings. More precisely, the diffractive properties of transmission gratings are the focus of this research. This work extends previous analysis performed by the authors but includes new features and approaches. More precisely, full 3D numerical modelling was carried out in all analyses. Each H-PDLC sample was generated randomly by a set of ellipsoid geometry-based LC droplets. The liquid crystal (LC) director inside each droplet was computed by the minimisation of the Frank elastic free energy as a function of the applied electric field. The analysis carried out considered the effects of Frank elastic constants

K_{11}

K_{22}

and

K_{33}

; the anchoring strength

W_{0}

; and even the saddle-splay constant

K_{24}

. The external electric field induced an orientation of the LC director, modifying the optical anisotropy of the optical media. This effect was analysed using the 3D split-field finite-difference time-domain (SF-FDTD) method. In order to reduce the computational costs due to a full 3D tensorial analysis, a highly optimised method for high-performance computing solutions (HPC) was developed. The influences of the anchoring and voltage on the diffraction efficiencies were investigated, showing the potential of this approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Optical Materials)

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