Electro-optical Memory of a Nanoengineered Amorphous Blue-Phase-III Polymer Scaffold

Sahil Sandesh Gandhi; Min Su Kim; Jeoung-Yeon Hwang; Liang-Chy Chien

doi:10.1002/adma.201603226

Electro-optical Memory of a Nanoengineered Amorphous Blue-Phase-III Polymer Scaffold

Adv Mater. 2016 Oct;28(40):8998-9005. doi: 10.1002/adma.201603226. Epub 2016 Aug 24.

Authors

Sahil Sandesh Gandhi¹, Min Su Kim², Jeoung-Yeon Hwang², Liang-Chy Chien³

Affiliations

¹ Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program and Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, 1425 Lefton Esplanade, Kent, OH, 44242, USA. sgandhi6@kent.edu.
² Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program and Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, 1425 Lefton Esplanade, Kent, OH, 44242, USA.
³ Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program and Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, 1425 Lefton Esplanade, Kent, OH, 44242, USA. lchien@kent.edu.

PMID: 27554290
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201603226

Abstract

An electro-optical (EO) memory device is presented, which is based on a 3D nanostructured polymer scaffold of the amorphous blue phase III (BPIII) of cholesteric liquid crystals (LCs), which can impart optical isotropy, optical activity, and sub-millisecond EO response of BPIII to conventional nematic LCs. This functional scaffold also enables the first experimental observation of the long debated structure of BPIII.

Keywords: blue-phase-III liquid crystals; electro-optical memory; nanostructured; polymer scaffolds; sub-millisecond switching.