Abstract
Electro-optically active polymer–liquid crystal composites based on ferroelectric liquid crystals and stretched porous polyethylene films were developed. The alignment of ferroelectric liquid crystals incorporated into the porous polyethylene films with average porous diameter of around 200 nm was observed and studied. It was shown experimentally that these samples containing ferroelectric liquid crystals are flexible electro-optical films exhibiting a saturation electric field near 2·107 Vm−1 and a response time of about 30 μs under the action of the saturation field. A simple theoretical model of ferroelectric liquid crystal molecules' complete reorientation in electric fields inside pores of the films has been proposed and confirmed experimentally.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research (Projects 09-03-12234-OFI-M, 08-03-00481-a, 08-07-13554-OFI-TS), and Program COST-D35.