Optical Shutters

VS Series

Value priced, optimized switching speed performance

Available in rectangular form factor, the VS Series Optical Shutters offer cost savings while maintaining maximum switching speed performance.

Available in rectangular form factors, the VS Series Optical Shutters offer cost savings while maintaining most performance advantages in applications demanding the fastest switching speeds.
 
The VS Series offers a significant performance advantage in Optical Shutter applications demanding the fastest optical response times, typically ranging from 15 – 150 µs.  Attractive for their high switching speeds and affordable prices, VS Optical Shutters require a dc-balanced ac drive signal, typically resulting in 50% duty cycle operation.  Minimum drive voltage levels are required; as low as ± 5 V ac is sufficient for most applications.

An Optical Shutter is a two-state device used to rapidly open and close a light path (from lens to film, for example). Optical Shutters are typically used to control the amount of time that a light-sensitive material is exposed to optical radiation.

Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) manufactures and sells liquid crystal based Optical Shutters for applications requiring active timing control of beam transmittance. Key features of our Optical Shutters include high-speed binary operation, high purity linear polarized output, and maximum extinction ratio performance. Since these devices are solid state - undesirable mechanical motion, associated noise, and vibration problems are eliminated.

Device Construction

VS Series Optical Shutters begin with fusion-drawn, sheet glass.  After deposition of a transparent conductive coating layer (indium-tin oxide or ITO, typically) these window substrates are then evenly covered with a polymer layer, which is then rubbed or buffed, forming tiny microgrooves in the polymer layer. These microgrooves provide the alignment directionality critical in liquid crystal device production.

The coated and buffed windows are then spaced a few microns apart.  The cavity between substrates is now filled with liquid crystal material and sealed.

High extinction linear polarizers are crossed, and then laminated to the liquid crystal cell substrates.  External surfaces are left uncoated to minimize cost.  With this crossed polarizer orientation, VS Series Optical Shutters exhibit full optical transmittance at the negative voltage state.  Minimum transmission occurs at the positive voltage level, as specified with your device.