Phys.org July 14, 2023 Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) are becoming increasingly popular due to their unique chiral structural color. Unlike ordinary CLCs materials, CLCs particles exhibit angle-independence, making them particularly noteworthy. However, currently, there are limited effective methods for controlling the structural color of CLCs particles, other than adjusting the concentration of chiral dopants or introducing stimuli-responsive groups. Researchers in Japan have developed a scalable and cost-effective process for preparing monodisperse CLCs particles via dispersion polymerization. By making CLCs into micrometer-sized monodisperse spheres, the helical pitch of CLCs could be varied according to its particle size, and the resulting structural […]
Tag Archives: Liquid crystals
Arrays of metallic nanoparticles can form an optical cavity tunable by liquid crystals
Phys.org March 2, 2022 An international team of researcher (the Netherlands, Japan) designed, constructed, and analyzed a tunable device combining nano-particle arrays that support collective surface lattice resonances (SLRs) with liquid crystals. By leveraging the tunability of liquid crystals and the effect of the refractive index of the environment on SLRs, the optical response of the array can be controlled electrically by switching between states in the liquid crystal. The resulting rapid and reversible spectral tuning gives users a large degree of control over SLR wavelength. Because of narrow collective resonances the changes in refractive index that can be induced […]
Liquid crystals for fast switching devices
Phys.org December 6, 2021 In some liquid crystals the molecules self-assemble into helical structures which are characterized by pitch. Pitch determines how quickly they react to an applied electric field. An international team of researchers (Germany, Czech Republic, Russia) investigated a liquid crystalline cholesteric compound called EZL10/10 which had only one chiral center and it was only104 nanometres. Further analysis showed that in this material the cholesteric spirals form domains with characteristic lengths of about five pitches. According to the researchers the short pitch makes the material unique and promising for optoelectronic devices with very fast switching times, and the […]