| dc.description.abstract | In this study, we have successfully demonstrated a polarization selective scattering liquid crystal (LC) device based on polymer network twisted nematic LCs. Briefly, the combination of the adopted LC cell, generated by two indium-tin-oxide-coated glass substrates having orthogonally homogeneous alignment layers, and the homogeneously mixed materials of LC polymer (RM257) and nematic LC (E7), is the key point to achieve the LC devices. Such a LC device shows polarization-selective light scattering state when an external voltage is applied, and can be switched back to normally white mode twisted nematic LCs when the applied voltage is switched off.
The obtained results indicate that this LC device possesses the polarization-selective light scattering ability because of the refractive index collocation between nematic LC and LC polymer, as well as the 90o twisted alignment of LC cell. When this LC device is set as a scattering mode, the incident light with the particular direction of linearly polarization will not be able to pass through the LC cell due to strong scattering; on the contrary, the orthogonal direction of the incident linearly polarized light can easily penetrate through the LC device. Moreover, the achieved LC device can be used as an electrically controllable LC linear polarizer, which can filter an unpolarized light into a linearly polarized light when a suitable voltage is applied, and can be turned off when the applied voltage is switched off. The degree of polarization of the output linearly polarized light is 0.97.
Besides, such a reported characteristic of polarization-selective scattering can be applied to generate electrically controllable optical devices and display modes, such as electrically controllable LC polarizers and transflective LCDs. According to the obtained results, we also realize that the various polarization states of the illuminated UV light to polymerize LC polymers cause different performances for the LC devices. | en_US |