Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals in Microcapillaries: Observation of Different Electro-optic Switching Mechanisms

Abstract

Ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) can provide fast electro-optic switching effects in photonic crystal fibers, which are promising for developing integrated optical modulators to be used for optical telecommunication. The present study describes experiments on capillaries filled with FLCs, which pave the way toward application of FLCs in state-of-the-art solid core microstructured optical fibers. A method to achieve uniform alignment of the helix axis and the appearance of two different switching modes with switching times in the submillisecond range are found. An additional slow relaxation that was reported recently can be attributed to space charge fields, which may appear due to the migration of ions.

51‐3: High‐birefringence Liquid Crystal for Phase‐only Spatial Light Modulators

“…We chose a high Δn and high resistivity LC mixture (host 1) as host; its physical properties are listed as follows: Δn=0.337 @ =550 nm, Δε =2.86, visco-elastic constant γ 1 /K 11 =17.5 ms/μm 2 , high resistivity >10 13 Ωꞏcm, melting temperature T m = -18°C and clearing temperature T c = 123°C. Its clearing point is reasonably high, but its Δε, rotational viscosity, and melting point still need improvement.…”

“…To improve response time, several approaches have been investigated, such as dual frequency LCs [8], polymer-stabilized blue phase LCs [9][10][11], ferroelectric LCs [12,13], and polymer network LCs [14,15]. Each technology has its own pros and cons, and it is still quite challenging to satisfy all the abovementioned requirements.…”

Spectral Properties of Photo-Aligned Photonic Crystal Fibers Infiltrated with Gold Nanoparticle-Doped Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

“…Most of the published scientific reports devoted to PLCFs describe potential applications of PCFs infiltrated with nematic LCs [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. However, other types of LCs, such as chiral smectic C LCs (SmC*), with their ferroelectric properties (FLCs) [10,11], or the LC blue phase exhibiting a three-dimensional double-twist structure [12][13][14], have also been considered as suitable materials for infiltrating the PCF structure. The most significant factor of the prospective PLCF-based optical systems is their rapid electro-optical response.…”

Exploiting molecular symmetry reduction to enrich liquid crystal phase diversity

“…Compounds that exhibit SmC-N transitions are relatively uncommon, [34][35][36][37][38] yet are attractive targets that could potentially avoid buckling defects associated with layer-contraction of SmC LCs cooled from SmA phases, which are known to degrade the performance of ferroelectric liquid crystals. [39][40][41][42][43] Figure 2. Compounds prepared for this study.…”