電場下におけるコレステリック液晶滴の挙動

抄録

The behaviors of liquid crystal droplets under electric fields are experimentally investigated for developing the amorphous actuator which achieves three dimensional actuation. We have tested two kinds of the liquid crystal which are nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals. The liquid crystal droplets are suspended in the isotropic phase of the same material with the droplet, and DC and pulsed voltage is applied to the droplet. In the case of DC voltage, the droplets drive randomly for both of the nematic and cholesteric droplet. On the other hand, for the application of the pulsed voltage, whereas the nematic droplets do not drive, the cholesteric droplets drive in the direction perpendicular to the chiral axis of the molecular orientation structure.