are compact u02dc 6 cm 3 low power only tens of u03bcwatts and simple only 3 electrodes in the lc clad architecture lower right of fig2 the evanescent field of the waveguide mode interacts with the surface layer lc molecules horizontal beam steering is achieved by prism shaped electrodes 18 whose index may be voltage tuned lower left of fig2 vertical beam steering is achieved by allowing the evanescent field to tunnel into the high index substrate high index glass for u03bb lt 1 2 u03bcm by tapering the subcladding an s taper provides a gaussian output with a mode quality factor of m 2 u02dc 1 the output angle u03b8 vertical may be voltage tuned through a final electrode this provides 2 d tunable refraction of 60 u00b0 u00d7 15 u00b0 for with a 1 mrad divergent beam in an embodiment of the invention shown in fig3 a discrete steerer component 100 includes a stack 102 of pgs 16 with each pg 16 preferably a highly efficient diffraction grating consisting of nematic liquid crystals that is effective as a thin film polarizing beam splitter exemplary pgs 16 are described in u s patent application publication no 20120188467 u201c beam steering devices including stacked liquid crystal polarization gratings and related methods of.