Improvement of Light Switching Response for Induced Smectic(Side-Chain Liquid Crystal Copolymer/Liquid Crystals)Composite Systems

Abstract

Mesomorphic characteristics and bistable electro-optical switching characteristics driven by a.c. electric flelds with different frequencies were investigated for the induced smectic(side-chain liquid crystalline copolymer with terminal nonpolar groups: LCcoP/low molecular weight nematic liquid crystals with terminal polar groups: nematic LCs)composite systems. This paper describes the influence of the mesogenic side chain fraction and the spacer length of mesogenic side chain in LCcoP on the mesomorphic properties and the electro-optical effect for the(LCcoP/LCs)composite systems in order to improve the switching speed. LCcoP with the optimum substituent fraction of mesogenic side chain is required to realize a higher speed electro-optical switching as well as a stable memory effect. Also, the response speed of the binary composite systems became faster with a decrease of the spacer length of mesogenic side groups in LCcoP.