The effect of curing temperature and time on morphology and Electro-Optical properties of flexible thermoset polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films

Abstract

In this work, we studied the effect of cure temperature (T_c) and cure time (t_c) on the morphology and few electro-optical properties of flexible thermoset PDLC systems by Polymer Induced Phase Separation (PIPS) method. Under a constant thickness, we determined the morphological parameters including dimension, number density and volume fraction of phase separated liquid crystal droplets, as well as optical transmissions and switching voltages as a function of cure temperature and cure time. We analyzed the effect of cure temperature and time on morphology and electro-optical properties in the thermoset PDLC films.

Keywords:

• Cure temperature
• cure time
• flexible thermoset PDLC
• morphology
• optical transmission
• switching voltage

Acknowledgments

The experimental part of this work had been carried out under Italian funded research project 1.1.4 “Messa a punto di film con proprietà elettro-ottiche” at Specialty Film Division of Snia Research, Snia BPD (FIAT Group), Pisticci Scalo (MT) Italy, during 1993-2000 period.