Evaporative deposition of SiO2 nanoparticles multilayer on ITO substrates and application for vertical alignment of liquid crystals - Effect of dichroic dye

In this work the SiO2 nanoparticles layer was deposited by solvent evaporation on ITO substrates and used for vertical alignment of pure and dye doped liquid crystal (LC) in confined cells. The pure nematic liquid crystal (NLC) material was filled into SiO2 layer coated cell by the capillary injection method. The 0.5 wt.% of dichroic dye added into the LC mixture and studied its effect on electro-optic behaviour of display cell. The FESEM study reveals the multilayered deposition of the SiO2 on Indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates. Conoscopic and polarised optical microscopy (POM) study show good dark black and bright textures at OFF and ON state under the cross polarizers and confirm vertical alignment (VA) of LC molecules. The electro-optical (E-O) study shows the lower threshold and operating voltage with higher contrast ratio in dye doped vertically aligned LC (VALC) cell as compare to the pure SiO2 coated VALC cell.

Polymer Dispersed Cholesteric Liquid Crystals With a Toroidal Director Configuration under an Electric Field

The electro-optical properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films are highly dependent on the features of the contained liquid crystal (LC) droplets. Cholesteric LC droplets with homeotropic boundaries can form several topologically different orientational structures, including ones with single and more point defects, layer-like, and axisymmetric twisted toroidal structures. These structures are very sensitive to an applied electric field. In this work, we have demonstrated experimentally and by computer simulations that twisted toroidal droplets reveal strong structural response to the electric field. In turn, this leads to vivid changes in the optical texture in crossed polarizers. The response of droplets of different sizes were found to be equivalent in terms of dimensionless parameters. In addition, the explanation of this phenomenon showed a comparison of theoretical and experimental structural response curves aids to determine the shape of the droplet. Finally, we demonstrated that the addition of a dichroic dye allows such films to be used as optical filters with adjustable color even without polarizers.

Efficiency of diffraction gratings based on liquid crystals

Wehave recorded geometric-phase diffraction gratingusing the method of holography on a thin layer of dichroic dye. A transmission liquid crystal cell hasbeen assembled inorder to obtain electrically-controlled diffraction in visible range. Also, using software for electrooptical effects modeling wehavecalculated the diffraction efficiency (DE) of the LC-based phase grating as a function of the voltage amplitude at the electrodes,es-timatedtheDEvariation as a function of LCcell thickness, LC materialbirefringenceand the radiation wavelength. The experimental data qualitatively matched with calcu-lation results. 1-st order DE of16% (at 532 nm) has been obtainedforsingle-sided phase grating LC. Furthermore, we have observed the decrease ofDEwith the increase of radiation wavelength.

Smart Window with Active-Passive Hybrid Control

Dimming and scattering control are two of the major features of smart windows, which provide adjustable sunlight intensity and protect the privacy of people in a building. A hybrid photo- and electrical-controllable smart window that exploits salt and photochromic dichroic dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal was developed. The photochromic dichroic dye causes a change in transmittance from high to low upon exposure to sunlight. When the light source is removed, the smart window returns from colored to colorless. The salt-doped cholesteric liquid crystal can be bi-stably switched from transparent into the scattering state by a low-frequency voltage pulse and switched back to its transparent state by a high-frequency voltage pulse. In its operating mode, an LC smart window can be passively dimmed by sunlight and the haze can be actively controlled by applying an electrical field to it; it therefore exhibits four optical states—transparent, scattering, dark clear, and dark opaque. Each state is stable in the absence of an applied voltage. This smart window can automatically dim when the sunlight gets stronger, and according to user needs, actively adjust the haze to achieve privacy protection.