Monodomain Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Layers for Phase Modulation

Monodomain Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Layers for Phase Modulation

Liquid crystal "Blue Phases" (BP) have evolved, in the last years, from a scientific curiosity to emerging materials for new photonic and display applications. They possess attractive features over standard nematic liquid crystals, like submillisecond switching times and polarization- independent optical response. However, BPs still present a number of technical issues that prevent their use in...

Angular dependent reflections of a monodomain blue phase liquid crystal

The angular dependent reflection of a monodomain blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) is investigated. Unlike a cholesteric liquid crystal with single twist structure, a monodomain BPLC exhibits several reflection orders from different crystal planes. As incident angle increases, the first order reflection experiences a blue shift while the second order experiences a red shift. We analyze the physi...

Blue-phase liquid crystal droplets.

Blue phases of liquid crystals represent unique ordered states of matter in which arrays of defects are organized into striking patterns. Most studies of blue phases to date have focused on bulk properties. In this work, we present a systematic study of blue phases confined into spherical droplets. It is found that, in addition to the so-called blue phases I and II, several new morphologies ari...

Electric field-induced monodomain blue phase liquid crystals

Stretchable liquid-crystal blue-phase gels.

Liquid-crystalline polymers are materials of considerable scientific interest and technological value. An important subset of these materials exhibit rubber-like elasticity, combining the optical properties of liquid crystals with the mechanical properties of rubber. Moreover, they exhibit behaviour not seen in either type of material independently, and many of their properties depend crucially...