Studies on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Tolan Derivatives Designed for Nonlinear Optical Applications

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe structure and properties of a series of ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) guests possessing a tolan unit in the core are presented. The data shows that in racemic smectic C hosts, the o-nitroalkoxytolan unit can be oriented along the polar axis in the FLC thin films, affording interesting new materials for NLO applications. The data are consistent with basic expectations regarding the structure of the FLC host-guest system. There are, however, interesting deviations from expectation suggesting that for some guests there is a large and unexplained effect of host structure on the properties of doped FLC phases.