Electroclinic measurements are reported for two chiral liquid crystals above their bulk chiral isotropic-nematic phase transition temperatures. It is found that an applied electric field E induces a rotation θ [∝Ε] of the director in the very thin paranematic layers that are induced by the cell's two planar-aligning substrates. The magnitude of the electroclinic coefficient dθ/dE close to the t...

When a chiral isotropic elastomer is brought to the low-temperature cholesteric phase, the nematic degree of freedom tends to order and form a helix. Due to the nematoelastic coupling, this also leads to elastic deformation of the polymer network that is locally coaxial with the nematic order. However, the helical structure of nematic order is incompatible with the energetically preferred elast...

Measurements of the chirality (2 pi/pitch) in the chiral nematic phase and of a structural constant proportional to the chirality in the isotropic liquid for a system in which a helix inversion line crosses the chiral nematic to isotropic phase transition line are reported. While the chirality shows a strong temperature dependence in the chiral nematic phase, it loses all temperature dependence...

We present a mean field theory to describe phase behaviors in mixtures of a polymer and a cholesteric liquid crystal under an external magnetic or electric field. Taking into account a chiral coupling between a polymer and a liquid crystal under the external field, we examine twist-untwist phase transitions and phase separations in the mixtures. It is found that a cholesteric-nematic phase tran...

We have discovered that the self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) into chiral nematic phases varies significantly with the substrate and evaporation rate. These variables allow the reflectance peak of iridescent chiral nematic films of CNCs and mesoporous silica templated from CNCs to be tuned over a wide range of wavelengths.

Polyaddition of mesogenic moieties to C60 were found to yield chiral supermolecular nanoparticles which exhibit iridescent helical chiral nematic phases.

Large cell gap permanent Bistable Twisted Nematic Liquid Crystal Display (π-BTN) using photo-alignment technology has been demonstrated. This display can be switched between φ and π + φ twisted states by means of a combination of in-plane electric field and vertical electric field for creating both polar anchoring breaking and an electro-hydrodynamic flow. Such device is cell gap independent. P...

We present an experimental study of the quasi-elastic Raman scattering (QES) plane-wave and twisted light by liquid crystals. Depending on their temperature, these crystals can exhibit isotropic, nematic chiral phases. The question is addressed how phase a crystal state incident affect energy spectra scattered radiation, whose shape usually described combination Lorentzian Gaussian components. ...

For VLSI implementation, low operation voltage and switching current are the major concerns. Yet, none of the driving schemes published so far has addressed this combined issue. We studied the electro-optic characteristics of bistable cholesteric displays at the low transition voltage in this paper, and the effect of slew-rate on the maximum output current and average output power in a forthcom...