PA27 Sub-millisecond switching of refractive index in nano-pore dispersed anisotropic polymer/nematic liquid crystal composite

Abstract

We report the fast electro-optic response on the order of sub-milliseconds in nematic liquid crystal (NLC) film embedded with nano-pores (average size 40 nm) filled with a NLC. The nanocomposite film was fabricated simply by photopolymerizing NLC mixture doped with a reactive mesogen at a high concentration of 30 wt% with UV light. When an electric field was applied on the film, the birefringence shifted up to 0.14 and both the rise and decay response times showed 〜100μs due to local reorientation of molecules confined in the nano-pore.