The Relationship between the Monomer Chain Length and the Electro-Optical Properties of Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystals

Abstract

Five polymers dispersed liquid crystalline (LC) films were fabricated using photo-polymerizable monomers with different lengths of carbon chains. These LC films have shown different electro-optical (EO) properties. Through their SEM pictures, the relationship between the linear electro-optical effect and the mesh size of the polymer network was explored. With the increase of number of photo-polymerizable monomers, the mesh size of the polymer network would become larger. So the liquid crystal molecules would be easily oriented in the electric field and therefore, the threshold voltage and saturation voltage would decrease. The open state response times were also reduced and the off state response times would be extended. The DFT simulations have shown principal role of the ground state dipole moments in the observed electro-optical efficiency.