Electroclinic liquid crystals with large tilt angles for grayscale applications

Mark S. Spector; Jawad W. Naciri; Ranganathan Shashidhar; Paul A. Heiney

doi:10.1117/12.405310

24 October 2000 Electroclinic liquid crystals with large tilt angles for grayscale applications

Mark S. Spector, Jawad W. Naciri, Ranganathan Shashidhar, Paul A. Heiney

Proceedings Volume 4107, Liquid Crystals IV; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.405310
Event: International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, 2000, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Smectic-A liquid crystals exhibiting a large electroclinic effect are important for applications in view of their analog gray scale capability. In most of these materials, large electroclinic tilt angles are accompanied by buckling effects due to layer compression. This layer buckling is easily observed in an optical microscope as periodic stripes and drastically reduces the high contrast ratio necessary for optical devices. We have performed optical and x-ray scattering studies on a chiral, organosiloxane smectic-A liquid crystal. It is found that while the optical tilt angle exhibits a large dependence on the field, reaching values of about 31 degrees (for 5 V/micrometer applied field), the layer spacing shows only a very weak field-dependence, suggesting that the molecules have a nonzero tilt even with no applied field, and that the primary effect of the field is to induce long range order in the direction of the molecular tilt. This important result -- large field-induced optical tilt without a layer shrinkage -- has led to the development of materials with 256 gray -- large field-induced optical tilt without a layer shrinkage -- has led to the development of materials with 256 gray levels.

Citation Download Citation

Mark S. Spector, Jawad W. Naciri, Ranganathan Shashidhar, and Paul A. Heiney "Electroclinic liquid crystals with large tilt angles for grayscale applications", Proc. SPIE 4107, Liquid Crystals IV, (24 October 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.405310

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