Patterned optical anisotropy in woven conjugated polymer systems

Journal article, 2012

Weaving of highly oriented conjugated polymer/polyethylene tapes is demonstrated to permit the generation of concealed patterns that can be detected under appropriate polarized light illumination. This is achieved by exploiting the fact that the amount of transmitted light varies with the superposition sequence of semi-transparent objects that feature a high degree of linear birefringence as well as linear dichroism. An analysis based on M€uller calculus provides a theoretical description of the observed optical behavior.