Novel ferroelectric liquid crystals consisting glassy liquid crystal as chiral dopants

Abstract

A series of ferroelectric liquid crystals consisting new glassy liquid crystals (GLCs) as chiral dopants were prepared and evaluated for their potentials in fast switching ability less than 1 ms. The properties of pure ferroelectric glassy liquid crystals (FGLCs) and mixtures were reported in this paper. In particular, the novel FGLC possessing wide chiral smectic C mesophase over 100 degrees C is able to suppress smectic A phase of host. The mixture containing 2.0 % GLC-1 performs greater alignment ability and higher contrast ratio than R2301 (Clariant, Japan) in a 2 mu m pre-made cell (EHC, Japan). These results indicate that novel FLC mixtures consisting glassy liquid crystals present a promising liquid crystal materials for fast switching field sequential color displays.