Shape change in liquid crystal fibers using polymerizable liquid crystal monomers

Abstract

Liquid crystal (LC) fibers are known to be made by adding specific additives to smectic liquid crystal. Such LC fibers are known to show surface sensitive optical mode, so called Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM), which is expected to be applied to optical devices. However, LC fibers reported in previous studies were unstable structure and easily collapsed into a droplet by temperature. Therefore, optical characteristics of LC fibers could not be sufficiently evaluated. In this study, we will fabricate and investigate LC fibers which contain the polymerizable LC (PLC) monomers and the photoinitiator. We confirmed that the LC fibers with PLC monomers were thicker and had a longer duration than those induced by the LC alone.