Michael R. Fisch

Room temperature heliconical twist-bend nematic liquid crystal

The nanostructured heliconical twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase is a new condensed phase of matter with unique properties. Here we present the first example of an achiral hybrid bent-core liquid crystal trimer that at temperatures below the conventional N phase exhibits the Ntb phase from approximately 80 °C down through room temperature. The Ntb phase has a helical structure with a period of ~19 nm.

Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) wavefront corrector and beam steerer

A spatial light modulator, which is capable of high-resolution wavefront compensation and high accuracy beam steering, has been demonstrated using a Liquid Crystal On Silicon (LCOS) microdisplay with 1024×768 XGA resolution. When the device is used as a wavefront corrector, about 18.7 waves (peak-to-valley at 632.8nm) of aberration in the optical system is corrected to a residual of 1/9 wave (peak to valley) or 1/30 wave rms. Measurement of the far field beam profile confirmed the strehl ratio improved from 0.006 with the wavefront correction off, to a strehl ratio of 0.83 after correction. An additional linear phase ramp was added to the correction phase ramp to simultaneously correct and steer the laser beam. We demonstrated we can steer the beam continuously in the range of ±4 mrad in X-Y plane, with a steering accuracy better than 10μrad, or about 1/10 the diffraction limited beam divergence. The quality of the steered beam remains very high during the steering as the ellipticity of beam is smaller than 1±0.04, focused beam waist is 1.3x the diffraction limited beam waist and strehl ratio remains higher than 0.66. The 1-D beam steering efficiency is 80% at the maximum steering angle of 4 mrad, which agrees very well with our Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulation result of diffraction efficiency 86% at maximum steering angle. These results suggest that an LCOS device can be used to achieve very high-resolution wavefront control at very high efficiency.

Vanishing Freedericksz transition threshold voltage in a chiral nematic liquid crystal

A negative dielectric anisotropy cholesteric liquid crystal, oriented homeotropically in a wedged capacitance cell, was subjected to an applied electric field. The Freedericksz transition threshold voltage was found to depend on the local thickness of the sample, and was found to vanish at a thickness of order 3/2 P, where P is the pitch of the cholesteric in the bulk. The results are consistent with a continuum elastic theory. A discussion of the technological ramifications is presented.

HOMEOTROPIC, RUB-FREE LIQUID-CRYSTAL LIGHT SHUTTER

A liquid‐crystal light shutter based upon homeotropic orientation has been fabricated, such that no rubbing is required. The device, which is dark in the voltage‐off state and transmitting in the voltage‐on state, exhibits contrast ratios in excess of 3000:1, with transmission efficiencies of 70% to 95%. Characterization results of one prototype are reported herein.

The electro-optic properties of colloidal silica filled nematics

The optical and electro-optical properties of filled nematic liquid crystals, nematic systems with added colloidal silica nanoparticles (⩽ 6%), have been studied. The macroscopic near IR birefringence of cells constructed from these materials was measured for wavelengths between 2 and 5 mum, and a wavelength independent value of 0.16 was obtained. The visible optical behaviour of cells formed with untreated ITO substrates using both filled nematic, and filled nematic and dichroic dyes was similar to those observed in polymer dispersed liquid crystals. At an electric field of 1–2 V μm -1, the cells were highly transmitting, while at low fields they were highly scattering. The effects of colloidal silica nanoparticle concentration, cell thickness, electric field and substrate preparation (rubbed polyimide versus no surface treatment) on the electro-optical behaviour of these cells were studied.

Filled Liquid Crystal Depolarizers

The construction and properties of scattering type liquid crystal depolarizers are discussed. The Mueller matrices that describe these devices are measured and compared to ideal depolarizers and ideal linear materials. The present depolarizers do not perform as well as crystal pseudodepolarizers. Nevertheless, when polarized light is incident on one of these devices the polarization of the transmitted light can be uniform to within 5%. These devices have the advantage that they can be made to areas as large as 30–30 cm or larger, are inexpensive, and can be electrically switched off and on.

Emissivity and electrooptical properties of semiconducting quantum dots/rods and liquid crystal composites: a review

Investigations of the mixtures of semiconducting quantum scale particles in anisotropic liquid crystal (LC) medium have become a vibrant area of research primarily due to their very interesting phenomenology. The results of these investigations fall into four groups: (i) Photoluminescent emissive properties of the quantum particles ordinarily depend on the size, shape, and chemical nature of the particles. These undergo important changes in their spectrum, polarization, and isotropy of emission when dissolved in an anisotropic LC phase. Moreover, their response to external stimuli such as mechanical, optical, or electric fields is altered in important ways; (ii) physical properties of LCs such as viscosity, dielectric relaxation, etc are modified by the addition of quantum particles. Their presence in ferroelectric smectic LC is known to give rise to an antiferro- to ferri-electric phase transition and suppresses the paraelectric phase; (iii) switching characteristics of LC devices are altered in important ways by the addition of quantum particles. Their threshold voltage is usually lowered, contrast ratio, and switching speed of nematic, ferroelectric, and cholesteric devices may increase or decrease depending on the concentration, applied field, and particle anisotropy; and (iv) controlled aggregation of quantum particles at the interface between isotropic and LC domains, near added polystyrene beads, and in the vicinity of point defects gives rise to interesting photonic structures, enables studies of photon antibunching and single photon sources. Clearly, there is a need to understand the basic and applied aspects of these systems and find routes to their technological applications including sensors, electrooptical devices, and solar energy harvesting. This review provides an overview of recent work involving liquid crystals and a variety of quantum particles.

Robust liquid crystal droplets

The preparation and properties of cyanobiphenyl liquid crystal droplets encapsulated by the polymerizable lecithin 1,2-bis(10,12-tricosadiynoyl)-sn-glyero-3-phosphocholine (DC8,9PC) are described. Under a wide variety of preparation conditions the droplets obtain a diameter of approximately 10 mum. These droplets are stable for periods of over one year at room temperature. Furthermore, they are stable upon temperature cycling between the nematic and isotropic phases and between the smectic A to nematic to isotropic phase transitions.

The effect of terminal chain modifications on the mesomorphic properties of 4,4′-disubstituted diphenyldiacetylenes

A variety of terminal chain modifications (Y) were made on the diacetylenes in which X=C n H2n+1, C12H25O and F, and Y=CH2CH(Me)C2H5, COCH3, C≡CC5H11, C n F2n+1 C n H2n+1 and CH=CHCO2C3H7. Mesomorphic properties were determined by hot stage polarizing microscopy and DSC. These were compared with those for the dialkyl analogues (X=C m H2 m +1, Y=C n H2 n +1) and a series of 1- and 2-olefins (Y=CH=CHC n H2 n +1 and CH2CH=CHC n H2 n +1). The 1-olefin series showed wider range nematics than the dialkyl compounds, whereas the above modifications showed either narrow range nematic phases, no mesophase or higher melting temperatures. New transition temperature and enthalpy data are provided for some of the dialkyl and F-alkyl compounds previously reported, for comparisons. Preliminary birefringence data are also included along with the results of some heat and UV stability studies.

Tunable polarised fluorescence of quantum dot doped nematic liquid crystals

ABSTRACT The concentration, excitation photon wavelength, and polarisation dependent fluorescence of quantum dot (QD)–liquid crystal (LC) mixtures has been studied at room temperature using high-resolution, steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy. The fluorescence of QD–LC mixture increases with increasing QD’s concentration but the spectral red shift of ~10 nm relative to the stock QD–Toluene solution remains independent of concentration. In vertical switching (VS) cells, an external electric field changes the LC alignment direction and enhances the apparent fluorescence intensity. The apparent fluorescence anisotropy compared to that at zero applied electric field monotonically increases up to ~27% at an applied electric field of 0.6 V/µm. These results are consistent with the formation of disc-like assemblages of QDs oriented on planes perpendicular to the director of the nematic liquid crystal (NLC). These findings have important utility in polarisation sensitive photonic devices. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT