【研究成果】2016年-

研究成果93

Diffusion-based liquid crystal substitution for the improvement of electro-optic properties in polymer/cholesteric liquid crystal composites
YASUTAKA MAEDA, JUNJI KOBASHI, HIROYUKI YOSHIDA, AND MASANORI OZAKI
Vol. 7, No. 1 | 1 Jan 2017 | OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 92

Polymer/cholesteric liquid crystal composites (ChLCs) exhibit unique characteristics such as sub-millisecond response and deformation-free electro-optic tuning of the selective reflection band, and have thus been studied for the prospect of developing polarization-independent phase modulators. Here, we propose a diffusion-based method to replace the liquid crystal in the composite and hence improve the threshold characteristics. Because there is no rinsing process, the polymer network is retained almost perfectly, and can improve the threshold without deteriorating the light scattering or response characteristics. Simply substituting the chiral liquid crystal in the composite to an achiral liquid crystal without the chiral dopant was found to cause a 25% reduction in the threshold voltage, from 57 V to 41 V.

Schematic illustration of the samples (a) before polymerization, (b) after polymerization and (c) after substitution.