Morphological Studies of Holographically formed Polymer Dispersed Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

ABSTRACT

In this contribution we describe a method to control and tailor the polarization sensitivity in holographically formed polymer dispersed liquid crystals (H-PDLCs) using a ferroelectric liquid crystal mixture with a UV curable diacrylate monomer. By controlling the FLC to monomer weight ratio we can radically manipulate the polarization sensitivity in these diffraction gratings. We show the polarization is related to the polymer morphology and hence the final alignment of the ferroelectric liquid crystal. We investigate the distinct morphologies (droplet and channel-like) into which the ferroelectric liquid crystal rich regions can be formed by imaging both the macroscopic and microscopic cross sections using optical polarizing microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM).

Keywords:

• ferroelectric liquid crystals
• holographic gratings
• polymer dispersed liquid crystal

Acknowledgments

J. N. E. and G. P. C. acknowledge support for 3M, J. N. E. also acknowledges Sylvain Cloutier for AFM images, and G. P. C. acknowledges NSF Grant (ECS-0322878).