Electro-optical property of polymerized liquid crystal devices using linearly polarized UV irradiation

Display characteristics have a fairly strong dependence on the configuration of the liquid crystal (LC) molecules and interactions between the LC molecules and the alignment layer surface. To obtain LC devices with a fast response, the usage of reactive mesogens (RMs) have been studied. RMs polymerize in the vicinity of the alignment layer. We assessed the effectiveness of linearly polarized UV light for polymer formation. Three kinds of UV light, namely (i)non-polarized (ii)parallel to, and (iii)perpendicular to the rubbing direction, were used to irradiate LC cells with RM concentrations of 5wt% and 10wt%. For both RM concentrations, LC devices using LPUV parallel to the rubbing direction yielded the shortest decay times. SEM observation revealed that the fibrils polymerized linearly in the same direction on using LPUV parallel to the rubbing direction. The decay time was presumably shortened by the strong anchoring force and high alignment ability of the linear fibrils.

Design and Self-Assembling Behaviour of Calamitic Reactive Mesogens with Lateral Methyl and Methoxy Substituents and Vinyl Terminal Group

Smart self-organising systems attract considerable attention in the scientific community. In order to control and stabilise the liquid crystalline behaviour, and hence the self-organisation, the polymerisation process can be effectively used. Mesogenic units incorporated into the backbones as functional side chains of weakly cross-linked macromolecules can become orientationally ordered. Several new calamitic reactive mesogens possessing the vinyl terminal group with varying flexible chain lengths and with/without lateral substitution by the methyl (methoxy) groups have been designed and studied. Depending on the molecular structure, namely, the type and position of the lateral substituents, the resulting materials form the nematic, the orthogonal SmA and the tilted SmC phases in a reasonably broad temperature range, and the structure of the mesophases was confirmed by X-ray diffraction experiments. The main objective of this work is to contribute to better understanding of the molecular structure–mesomorphic property relationship for new functional reactive mesogens, aiming at further design of smart self-assembling macromolecular materials for novel sensor systems.

The synthesis and application of novel benzodithiophene based reactive mesogens with negative wavelength dispersion birefringence

Optical corrective retardation films are widely used in the display industry to compensate for a variety of imperfections such as off-axis contrast reduction, grey-scale inversion and colour shifts in LCDs...