Influence of the flow on the anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on a Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer studied by optical second-harmonic generation

The influence of capillary flow on the alignment of the nematic liquid crystal MBBA on fatty acid Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers was studied by optical second-harmonic generation. The surface dipole sensitivity of the technique allows probing the orientation of the first liquid crystal monolayer in the presence of the liquid crystal bulk. It was found that capillary flow causes the first monolayer of liquid crystal molecules in contact with the fatty acid monolayer to be oriented in the flow direction with a large pretilt (78 degrees), resulting in a quasi-planar alignment with splay-bend deformation of the nematic director in the bulk. itself is affected by the flow. The quasi-planar flow-induced alignment was found to be metastable. Once the flow ceases, circular domains of homeotropic orientation nucleate in the sample and expand until the whole sample becomes homeotropic. This relaxation process from flow-induced quasi-planar to surface-induced homeotropic alignment was also monitored by SHG. It was found that in the homeotropic state the first nematic layer presents a pretilt of 38 degrees almost isotropically distributed in the plane of the cell, with a slight preference for the direction of the previous flow.Comment: LaTeX2e article, 11 figures, 17 EPS files, submitte

Phase-matched second-harmonic generation in a ferroelectric liquid crystal waveguide

True phase-matched second-harmonic generation in a waveguide of crosslinkable ferroelectric liquid crystals is demonstrated. These materials allow the formation of macroscopically polar structures whose order can be frozen by photopolymerization. Homeotropic alignment was chosen which offers decisive advantages compared to other geometries. All parameters contributing to the conversion efficiency are maximized by deliberately controlling the supramolecular arrangement. The system has the potential to achieve practical level of performances as a frequency doubler for low power laser diodes.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX2e article, 3 figures, 4 EPS files, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Investigations of the structure of a cholesteric phase with a temperature induced helix inversion and of the succeeding S*C phase in thin liquid crystal cells

Investigations of 4-[(S, S)-2, 3 epoxyhexyloxy]-phenyl-4-(decyloxy)-benzoate by polarizing microscopy, the Cano-Grandjean method, optical rotation dispersion and UV-VIS spectroscopy reveal a cholesteric phase with temperature induced reversal of the helical twist. Switching time experiments in the S*C phase show that the intrinsic helix can be unwound reversibly and irreveribly by application of electric fields of different strengths

Orthoconic liquid crystals - A case study

Since the early investigations on liquid crystals it was realized how the confining surfaces often determine the textures and even properties of the material. This influence is particularly complex and important for chiral materials. When we come to chiral smectics the surfaces may have dramatic effects. These are illustrated on the ferroelectric liquid crystals; they then again increase in importance for the antiferroelectric liquid crystals where the most recent example is given by the orthoconic liquid crystals. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

On some important chapters in the history of liquid crystals

Before 1910, the study of liquid crystals was dominated by Lehmann and the German school of chemists. The point of gravity then moved to France with Friedel as a leading figure. While there are many studies about Lehmann, there are fewer about Friedel. He has written about himself, so to speak, and more people have cited him than read his original papers. In the first part of this historical review, I will, after a close reading of the original papers, trace the development on French soil between 1910 and 1922. After 1922, the progress stopped in France, but a renewal of interest in liquid crystals came from Germany in the late 1920s and the first international symposium was organised there in 1931, closely followed by one in England 1933. After the Second World War, a new symposium in 1958 revived the field and then came a new outburst of turbulent productivity in the late 1960s. My aim is to focus on some of the most prominent persons and some turning points also in this modern era. But my foremost aim is to illustrate that nothing happened in the straightforward way in which most texts tend to outline the history

Surface- and field-induced AFLC structures detected by dielectric spectroscopy

In order to better understand which features in dielectric spectra of antiferroelectric liquid crystals (AFLCs) are due to the bulk director geometry and which are due to surface-induced structures, we have performed dielectric spectroscopy measurements with simultaneous texture monitoring on two SmC*-exhibiting AFLC homologues (11- and 12F1M7), at varying cell gap. Such AFLCs are strongly affected by surface action even in fairly thick cells (d≈15µm), with heavy supercooling of the SmC* phase as the most obvious result. We show that the supercooled structure can be removed by AC-field treatment in the SmCa* phase, but some domains may stay in a polar geometry, as reflected in both texture and dielectric signature. On heating from the antiferroelectric SmC?* subphase into SmC*, meta-stable non-helical domains may form at cell gaps much larger than the helical pitch. These domains give rise to a lowfrequency dielectric absorption not seen in bulk SmC* samples

On the phase sequence of antiferroelectric liquid crystals and its relation to orientational and translational order

The substance MHPOBC is the oldest and still most important reference antiferroelectric liquid crystal (AFLC). There is still considerable controversy concerning the correct phase designations for this material and, in particular, about the presence or absence of SmC* in its phase sequence. By means of dielectric spectroscopy and polarizing microscopy, we show that whereas the pure compound lacks the SmC* phase, this phase rapidly replaces the SmC*b subphase through the reduced purity resulting from temperature-induced chemical degradation which is hard to avoid under standard experimental conditions. X-ray investi- gations furthermore show that this change in phase sequence is coupled to a decrease in translational order. This explains the large variations in the reported phase sequence and electro-optic behaviour of MHPOBC, in particular concerning the SmC*b phase which has been said to exhibit ferro-, ferri- as well as antiferroelectric properties. It is likely that the sensitivity of the AFLC phase sequence to sample purity is a general property of AFLC materials. We discuss the importance of optical and chemical purity as well as tilt and spontaneous polarization for the observed phase sequence and propose that one of the key features determining the existence of the different tilted structures is the antagonism between orientational (nematic) and translational (smectic) order. The decreased smectic order (increased layer interdigitation) imposed by chemical impurities promotes the synclinic SmC* phase at the cost of the AFLC phases SmC*a , SmC*b , SmC*c and SmC*a . We also propose that the SmA* phase in FLC and AFLC materials may actually have a somewhat different character and, depending on its microstructure, some of the tilted phases can be expected to appear or not to appear in the phase sequence. AFLC materials exhibiting a direct SmA*–SmC*a transition are found to be typical ‘de Vries smectics’, with very high orientational disorder in the SmA* phase. Finally, we discuss the fact that SmC*b and SmC*c have two superposed helical superstructures and explain the observation that the handedness of the large scale helix may very well change sign, while the handedness on the unit cell level is preserved

Applications of Flexoelectricity

There have been a number of attempts to utilize the flexoelectric effect for electro-optic devices. Most of these have been aimed at new display modes, sometimes inspired by the twisted nematic (TN) cell and often with the aim of attaining bistability. The proposed modes so far do not consider smectic materials (where the flexoelectric phenomena are more complex) but deal with nematics or cholesterics (chiral nematics with a sufficiently short pitch to be negatively uniaxial). While success so far has been modest, two of the proposed devices stand out: the flexoelectro-optic device using cholesterics and the zenithal bistable device (ZBD) using non-chiral nematics. The first is a fast analogue device with several remarkable and unique properties. It is characterized by symmetric switching and a flexoelectric polarization is induced at every switching step. As its physics is relatively transparent and analytically accessible it is discussed here at some length, in particular because it gives valuable clues to both the potential and the problems of this device, which has a good chance to become a viable technology in the years to come. The second device is based on the direct flexoelectric effect, which means that a bulk polarization of a particular sign is essentially inverted in the switching operation. It has just reached the market, after a long time of experiments and modelling, in the form of a passively driven display with memory. Its physics is very complex and it can only be modelled to some extent in two dimensions and there is hardly any analytical theory that satisfactorily describes its global working mechanism. However, the basic ideas are simple and beautifully illustrate the physics of flexoelectricity and, as we will describe, the realization of a viable device represents no small engineering achievement