Touch‐Driven Bi‐Chiral Superstructures for Nested Encryption of Multiplexed Optical Information
Abstract
Abstract With the growing demand for data security, optical encryption has emerged as a promising solution due to its high‐speed, parallel and low‐power‐consumption characteristics. However, most optical encryption methods rely on static structures involved with only few optical degrees of freedom (DOFs), resulting in simple encryption methods susceptible to attacks. Herein, a dynamic nested optical encryption scheme is proposed using a touch‐driven bi‐chiral cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) superstructure, where relief‐structured polymerized CLCs are combined with temperature‐sensitive opposite‐handed CLCs. Through delicate photopatterning and Bragg reflection engineering, independent geometric phases can be induced to the reflected light with orthogonal circular polarization and multiple wavelengths. Thus, various optical DOFs (wavelength, amplitude, and polarization) and environmental factors (temperature or human‐device interaction) are encoded as different encryption dimensions. Based on the developed four‐step encryption algorithm, the four‐level nested encryption is demonstrated by multiplexing the plaintext and multilevel ciphertexts in structural colors, multicolored vectorial holography and their temperature‐driven variations. The plaintext can be derived only through a specific order, with the final step completed by a human touch. This work advances the on‐demand construction of chiral nanostructures, and offers a new paradigm for high‐security and high‐capacity optical informatics.
Article Details
Authors (14)
Rui Sun
Si‐Jia Liu
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 China
Yi‐Heng Zhang
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 China
Pei‐Han Xu
Key Laboratory of Light Field Manipulation and Information Acquisition Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology School of Physical Science and Technology Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi'an 710129 China
Lin Zhu
Dong Zhu
Wen Chen
Department of Immunology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Yi‐Ming Wang
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 China
Shi‐Hui Ding
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 China
Shi‐Jun Ge
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 China
Peng Chen
Bing‐Yan Wei
Key Laboratory of Light Field Manipulation and Information Acquisition Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology School of Physical Science and Technology Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi'an 710129 China
Jianlin Zhao
Yan‐Qing Lu
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures & Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures & College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Nanjing University Nanjing China