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P‐163: Mono‐Domain Alignment of the SmC Liquid Crystalline Phase for Analog Display Applications
Author(s) -
Reznikov Mitya,
Wall Bentley,
Bos Philip J.,
Handschy Mark A.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
sid symposium digest of technical papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 2168-0159
pISSN - 0097-966X
DOI - 10.1889/jsid39.1.1811
Subject(s) - liquid crystal , materials science , phase (matter) , millimeter , layer (electronics) , bubble , orientation (vector space) , domain (mathematical analysis) , optoelectronics , optics , nanotechnology , chemistry , mechanics , physics , geometry , mathematics , mathematical analysis , organic chemistry
We propose a novel liquid‐crystal alignment method that provides uniform orientation of otherwise difficult‐to‐align smectic materials lacking a nematic phase. The smectic‐A phase is grown in the presence of a 10–20 K/mm temperature gradient from an air bubble located within a cell by a photolithographically defined channel in the cell substrates. We obtain uniform layer alignment in millimeter‐wide smectic regions at growth rates below about 0.05 μm/s even though there is a tendency for growth instability. As many smectic materials that have attractive features for analog display applications, the proposed alignment method can play an important role in designing and development of analog display devices.