Electro-Optic Effects in Smectic a Phase

Autor: Alfred Saupe, Antal Jakli
Rok vydání: 1992
Předmět:
Zdroj: Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals Science and Technology. Section A. Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals. 222:101-109
ISSN: 1058-725X
DOI: 10.1080/15421409208048685
Popis: Smectic A films with a positive dielectric anisotropy can be switched to homeotropic textures by application of sufficiently high AC electric fields. They can relax to a light scattering state when the field is removed. The transition between the homeotropic and the light scattering focal conic texture is attractive for display applications, but Le Berre and Hareng found with 4–4′-cyano-octyl biphenyl (8CB), that the relaxation was slow and limited to a range of 3° C at the SA-N phase transition. We found that the relaxation can be enhanced by suitable surface treatments. With conventional polyimide coatings the relaxation to the scattering state occurs through the entire SA range (12° C). Observations on samples with differently treated polyimide coated surfaces indicate that the surface roughnes facilitates the relaxations. The relaxation time depends strongly on the temperature. It increases from 50ms near the N-SA transition to 0.3s at the SA-solid crystal transition. In the range of 5 to 50μ...
Databáze: OpenAIRE