Design of advanced multicomponent ferroelectric liquid crystalline mixtures with submicrometre helical pitch

ABSTRACT

New functional multicomponent ferroelectric liquid crystalline mixtures have been designed while searching smart self-assembling materials with submicrometre periodicity of the helical structure responding definite demands for application in electro-optic devices and photonics that exploit the deformed helix ferroelectric effect. The resulting designed mixtures possess the paraelectric smectic A* and the tilted ferroelectric smectic C* phases over a very broad temperature range down below the room temperature. The mesomorphic, electro-optic and dielectric properties have been studied and discussed. The presence of a very stable enantiotropic ferroelectric smectic phase exhibiting almost temperature independent helical pitch within 150–250 nm range and reasonably high values of the tilt angle might allow these mixtures to be applicable for practical purposes.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Self-assembling materials
• ferroelectric liquid crystal
• submicrometre helical pitch
• room temperature mixture

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Czech–Polish bilateral project: [Grant Number ME 7AMB13PL041] and research projects: [Grant Numbers MEYS LD14007 and CSF 15-02843S]; COST Action IC1208 and RMN/08-737/2015/WAT research project. Authors are grateful to Professor V.G. Chigrinov and Dr. A. Srivastava from HUST for a fruitful discussion of the results.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union: [Grant Number COST Action IC1208]; The Czech-Polish bilateral project: [Grant Number ME 7AMB13PL041]; Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego: [Grant Number RMN/08-737/2015/WAT].