Reactive mesogen retarders and applications

Reactive mesogen retarders or waveplates provide new opportunities for flexibility in the design of optical systems requiring polarization control. These true zero order retarders are less than 10 microns thick and can be used either as a free standing film or they can be coated as a film on other optical elements such as lenses or mirrors. The slow axis direction can be patterned to form small, even microscopic, discrete retarders or continuously varied to make radial or axial polarizers. We describe in detail the properties of these new optical retarders.