A long-pitch orthoconic antiferroelectric mixture modified by isomeric and racemic homostructural dopants

ABSTRACT

Orthoconic Antiferroelectric Liquid Crystals (OAFLC) are recognised as a promising medium for display and photonic applications due to their unique electrooptical properties. The application of OAFLC is still hampered by a number of parasitic effects deteriorating the electrooptical performance of contemporary available materials. An attempt elaborating of a working OAFLC mixture with the helical pitch longer than the typical cell gap is reported. Using this mixture, near-perfect optical uniformity and excellent dark state at the zero electric field applied were obtained. Basic OAFLC mixture was doped with two homostructural analogues to study the influence of the molecular polarity and chirality on the electrooptical performance and chosen physical parameters. The physical and structural properties of admixtures and their electrooptical performance are presented and discussed.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Helical pitch
• high tilted smectic
• orthoconic antiferroelectric smectic liquid crystals
• molecular chirality

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Science Centre (NCN Grant No. 012/05/N/ST8/02265.)

The authors want to thank Dr Wojciech Rejmer for his help in measuring helical pitch.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Narodowe Centrum Nauki [Grant Number 012/05/N/ST8/02265]