Spontaneous helix formation in non-chiral bent-core liquid crystals with fast linear electro-optic effect

Sithara P. Sreenilayam; Yuri P. Panarin; Jagdish K. Vij; Vitaly P. Panov; Anne Lehmann; Marco Poppe; Marko Prehm; Carsten Tschierske

doi:10.1038/ncomms11369

Spontaneous helix formation in non-chiral bent-core liquid crystals with fast linear electro-optic effect

Sithara P. Sreenilayam, Yuri P. Panarin, Jagdish K. Vij, Vitaly P. Panov, Anne Lehmann, Marco Poppe, Marko Prehm, Carsten Tschierske

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Liquid crystals (LCs) represent one of the foundations of modern communication and photonic technologies. Present display technologies are based mainly on nematic LCs, which suffer from limited response time for use in active colour sequential displays and limited image grey scale. Herein we report the first observation of a spontaneously formed helix in a polar tilted smectic LC phase (SmC phase) of achiral bent-core (BC) molecules with the axis of helix lying parallel to the layer normal and a pitch much shorter than the optical wavelength. This new phase shows fast (∼30 μs) grey-scale switching due to the deformation of the helix by the electric field. Even more importantly, defect-free alignment is easily achieved for the first time for a BC mesogen, thus providing potential use in large-scale devices with fast linear and thresholdless electro-optical response.

Original language	English
Article number	11369
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11369
Publication status	Published - 9 May 2016

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title = "Spontaneous helix formation in non-chiral bent-core liquid crystals with fast linear electro-optic effect",

abstract = "Liquid crystals (LCs) represent one of the foundations of modern communication and photonic technologies. Present display technologies are based mainly on nematic LCs, which suffer from limited response time for use in active colour sequential displays and limited image grey scale. Herein we report the first observation of a spontaneously formed helix in a polar tilted smectic LC phase (SmC phase) of achiral bent-core (BC) molecules with the axis of helix lying parallel to the layer normal and a pitch much shorter than the optical wavelength. This new phase shows fast (∼30 μs) grey-scale switching due to the deformation of the helix by the electric field. Even more importantly, defect-free alignment is easily achieved for the first time for a BC mesogen, thus providing potential use in large-scale devices with fast linear and thresholdless electro-optical response.",

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AU - Sreenilayam, Sithara P.

AU - Panarin, Yuri P.

AU - Vij, Jagdish K.

AU - Panov, Vitaly P.

AU - Lehmann, Anne

AU - Poppe, Marco

AU - Prehm, Marko

AU - Tschierske, Carsten

PY - 2016/5/9

Y1 - 2016/5/9

N2 - Liquid crystals (LCs) represent one of the foundations of modern communication and photonic technologies. Present display technologies are based mainly on nematic LCs, which suffer from limited response time for use in active colour sequential displays and limited image grey scale. Herein we report the first observation of a spontaneously formed helix in a polar tilted smectic LC phase (SmC phase) of achiral bent-core (BC) molecules with the axis of helix lying parallel to the layer normal and a pitch much shorter than the optical wavelength. This new phase shows fast (∼30 μs) grey-scale switching due to the deformation of the helix by the electric field. Even more importantly, defect-free alignment is easily achieved for the first time for a BC mesogen, thus providing potential use in large-scale devices with fast linear and thresholdless electro-optical response.

AB - Liquid crystals (LCs) represent one of the foundations of modern communication and photonic technologies. Present display technologies are based mainly on nematic LCs, which suffer from limited response time for use in active colour sequential displays and limited image grey scale. Herein we report the first observation of a spontaneously formed helix in a polar tilted smectic LC phase (SmC phase) of achiral bent-core (BC) molecules with the axis of helix lying parallel to the layer normal and a pitch much shorter than the optical wavelength. This new phase shows fast (∼30 μs) grey-scale switching due to the deformation of the helix by the electric field. Even more importantly, defect-free alignment is easily achieved for the first time for a BC mesogen, thus providing potential use in large-scale devices with fast linear and thresholdless electro-optical response.

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Spontaneous helix formation in non-chiral bent-core liquid crystals with fast linear electro-optic effect

Abstract

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