Comparison of the thermo- and electro-optical properties of doped and un-doped MOM based PDLCs

✍ Scribed by J. Zhou; L. Petti; P. Mormile; A. Roviello

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 365 KB
• Volume: 231
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0030-4018
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2003.12.040

✦ Synopsis

Experiments on the thermo-and electro-optical behavior of pure polymer dispersed liquid crystal (NOA-PDLC) film and new type of metallomesogen based PDLC (MOM-PDLC) film are presented. The NOA-PDLC film and the MOM-PDLC film consisted of the droplets of nematic LC (E7) up to a 40% weight fraction in a NOA resin matrix, respectively. The samples were prepared by putting the PDLC solutions into the Indium Tin Oxide (ITO)-coated glass cells and UV-curing process. The electro-optical properties of the NOA-PDLC films and MOM-PDLC films were studied under the conditions of an externally applied square wave electric field (2-11 V/lm) and a film thickness (30-50 lm) with an argon laser (wavelength 514 nm), respectively. The experimental results are compared for two kinds of PDLC films. The electro-optical effects showed promising switching times with a rise time of 1 ms and a decay time of 3 ms and an exceptionally high contrast ratio up to 800 for MOM-PDLC sample. These results demonstrate the validity of employing this new type of MOM-PDLC in electro-optical devices.