The physical properties of alkene-terminated liquid crystal molecules/E8 mixture and the electro-optical properties as they doped in polymer-dispersed liquid crystal systems

ABSTRACT

Effects of the content of fluorinated alkene-terminated liquid crystal (LC) molecules on the physical properties of the fluorinated alkene-terminated LC/E8 mixture were studied. The morphology and electro-optical properties as they doped in polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films were investigated. The detailed discussion of the obtained results is given. As a result, comparing with the physical properties of the series of LC mixtures with the same content of the analogous fully saturated compounds doped with E8, we find that the birefringence is significantly larger for the LC mixture with the alkene-terminated materials. Both fluorinated alkene-terminated LC molecules and the analogous fully saturated compounds doped with E8 reduce the driving voltage of PDLC films. Moreover, PDLC films with the fluorinated alkene-terminated LC molecules possessed higher contrast ratio and faster response time than that of the PDLC films prepared by adding the same mass fraction of the analogous fully saturated compounds. Thus, the ability to manipulate physical properties of LC mixture and electro-optical properties of PDLC films by changing the LC molecular structures may have future relevance for new LC structures design and applications of PDLC films.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Fluorinated alkene-terminated liquid crystal molecule
• dielectric anisotropy
• birefringence
• polymer network
• electro-optical properties
• polymer-dispersed liquid crystal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant numbers 8200902864, 51573101, 8200902976, 51773017, 51473020]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant number FRF-GF-17-B8].