Liquid-core liquid-cladding optical waveguide by liquid dielectrophoresis

This paper reports the design of an optical waveguide in which both the core and cladding structures are liquids. The waveguide is formed by driving a high permittivity core liquid in a low permittivity cladding liquid through dielectrophoresis (DEP). The DEP-driven core liquid preserves the advantage of the smooth liquid-liquid interface, while the stationary core and cladding liquid would eliminate scattering losses caused by liquid flowing. Because the core liquid is defined by the electric field, arbitrary two dimensional shapes of the waveguide can be achieved by voltage application on designed electrode patterns.