On the biaxiality of smectic C and ferroelectric liquid crystals

Ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) were a major topic for research in the 1980s and 1990s, to which George Gray and his research family played a fundamental role in developing the field. The famous symbiotic relationship between the chemists at Hull University and device physicists at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) continued throughout this period, providing the basis for the τVmin mode of FLC operation. The principal of this mode relies on the dielectric biaxiality inherent to the smectic C and ferroelectric smectic C* liquid crystal phases. As with nematics before, new materials and device physics developed hand-in-hand, allowing materials to be formulated with addressing times of 12μs at voltages below 30 V. After reviewing the material physics behind these devices, new measurements of the biaxial refractive indices and permittivities are presented, from which the biaxial order parameter C is determined

The contribution of triplet-triplet annihilation to the lifetime and efficiency of fluorescent polymer organic light emitting diodes

We demonstrate that the fast initial decay of a prototypical fluorescent polymer based organic light emitting diode device is related to the contribution that triplet-triplet annihilation makes to the device efficiency. We show that, during typical operating conditions, approximately 20% of the device efficiency originates from the production of singlet excitons by triplet-triplet annihilation. During prolonged device operation, the triplet excitons are quenched much more easily than the emissive singlets; thus, the contribution to the efficiency from triplet-triplet annihilation is lost during the early stages of the device lifetest. The fast initial decay of the device luminance can be removed by incorporating a triplet quenching additive into the active layer to remove any effect of triplet-triplet annihilation; this yields an increase in the device lifetime of greater than 3x and an even more significant improvement in the initial luminance decay. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3561430