In this study, a polymer dispersed cholesteric liquid crystal (PDChLC) film obtained via a one-step fabrication technique based on photopolymerization of a thiol-acrylate reaction system was prepared and characterized for the first time. The effects of the chiral dopant, the influence of thiol monomer functionality and content on the morphology and subsequent performance of the PDChLC films wer...

Active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD) is the most widely used display technology nowadays. Transparent display is one of the emerging technologies to provide people with more features such as displaying images on transparent substrates and simultaneously enabling people to see the scenery behind the panel. Polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) is a possible active matrix transparent di...

Electrically switched distributed-feedback (DFB) lasing action is presented in a Pyrromethene 580 lasing dye-doped holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal (H-PDLC) transmission grating structure. This design, when compared with the previously utilized H-PDLC reflection grating structure, has the advantage of a greatly enlarged gain length (10 mm) and a low concentration of liquid crystal (...

Addition of a low concentration of a very long (430 kg/mol) side group liquid crystal polymer is shown to produce dramatic changes in the flow characteristics of a calamitic nematic liquid crystal. This polymer causes a typical flow-aligning nematic liquid crystal to align near the velocity gradient direction rather than near the velocity direction, corresponding to having a tumbling parameter ...

A temperature-driven anchoring transition in a polymer/nematic fluid composite that is far from the bulk nematic-isotropic transition temperature is reported. A series of poly(methylheptyl acrylates) were studied to probe the subtle effects of the side chain structure of the polymer on control of the anchoring. A polymer-dispersed liquid crystal film made from TL205 and 1-methylheptyl acrylate ...

We developed novel air-stable 2D polymerized photonic crystal (2DPC) sensing materials for visual detection of gas phase analytes such as water and ammonia by utilizing a new ionic liquid, ethylguanidine perchlorate (EGP) as the mobile phase. Because of the negligible ionic liquid vapor pressure these 2DPC sensors are indefinitely air stable and, therefore, can be used to sense atmospheric anal...

High-quality InP/ZnS core-shell nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) were synthesized as a heavy-metal-free alternative to the gain media of cadmium-based colloidal nanoparticles. Upon UV excitation, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and optical gain were observed, for the first time, in close-packed InP/ZnS core-shell NQDs. The ASE wavelength can be selected by tailoring the nanocrystal size ove...

Presented is the study of the diffraction properties of transmission holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal (H-PDLC) grating. We constructed a two-dimensional model of H-PDLC film with cylindrical LC droplets. Director distribution inside LC droplets was calculated using the Monte-Carlo method. To calculate light propagation through the film we have solved numerically the Maxwell equation...