Blue Phases: Prior Art, Potential Polar Effects, Challenges

Abstract

Currently, we witness a fabulous revival of blue phases. For many years, the small temperature range of blue phase stability in traditional systems seemed to restrict the extremely interesting research on these defect structures to purely academic questions. But the dramatically extended stability range in polymer-stabilized blue phases and dimers makes even progress of the current display technology by means of blue phases feasible. In this paper, state-of-the-art properties of blue phases are reviewed. Some challenges for future investigations are pointed out, with an emphasis on potential polar effects.

Keywords:

• Liquid crystals
• chirality
• disinclinations
• fast displays

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Blanca Ros and the organizers of the 12^th International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals for the opportunity to present a review on blue phases. By targeting to identify “Challenges in chiral and polar systems,” the conference organizers motivated the considerations described in chapter 3. Financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, GRK 1464 and KI 411) and the European Science Foundation (EUROCORES, 05-SONS-FP-014) is gratefully acknowledged.