Observation of Newtonian Capillary Shear Flow in an Oriented Cholesteric Liquid Crystal

Observation of Newtonian Capillary Shear Flow in an Oriented Cholesteric Liquid Crystal

Capillary and winding transitions in a confined cholesteric liquid crystal.

We consider a Lebwohl-Lasher model of chiral particles confined in a planar cell (slit pore) under different boundary conditions, and solve it using mean-field theory. The phase behaviour of the system with respect to temperature and pore width is studied. Two phenomena are observed: (i) an isotropic-cholesteric transition, which exhibits an oscillatory structure with respect to pore width, and...

Colloidal cholesteric liquid crystal in spherical confinement

The organization of nanoparticles in constrained geometries is an area of fundamental and practical importance. Spherical confinement of nanocolloids leads to new modes of packing, self-assembly, phase separation and relaxation of colloidal liquids; however, it remains an unexplored area of research for colloidal liquid crystals. Here we report the organization of cholesteric liquid crystal for...

Enhancing cholesteric liquid crystal laser performance using a cholesteric reflector.

A high performance dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) laser is demonstrated by incorporating a passive CLC reflector to the active cell. The polarization-conserved CLC reflector effectively increases the distributed feedback cavity length which, in turn, results in a significant enhancement in lasing efficiency and a dramatic reduction in beam divergence. The lasing characteristics are ...

Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Flakes—a New Form

LLE Review, Volume 74 139 The last 20 years have seen a growth of mixed-media systems in which cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC’s) are one component. These include polymer-dispersed CLC’s1 in which the CLC’s are confined to microdroplets within a continuous isotropic polymer and CLC’s in gels2 in which there is a small amount of polymer to stabilize the CLC structure. In either case, the contin...