A series of side chain liquid crystalline polymer(SCLCP) was prepared to control the configuration of low molecular weight liquid crystal(LC) molecules at the interface with strong anchoring.
This polymer has cyanobiphenyl unit as a side group which is the same mesogenic unit as the low molecular weight LC, and later, they will be blended to form polymer dispersed liquid crystal(PDLC) materials. This polymer is different from common SCLCP in a point that it has very short spacer unit, which prevents the blend from being homogeneous or being in a micro-scale phase separated state by strong interaction between the side group and LC.
However, a succession of copolymer with PMMA will be used as a PDLC matrix because the homopolymer shows side chain induced crystallinity.
Then the textures of nematic LC droplets were observed and compared with simulated textures. A radial configuration rarely appears experimentally when the droplet size was reduced. But we confirm that it was possible to change the configurations from axial to radial by using this SCLCP system.
And a series of electro-optical responses of PDLC cells were examined by applying the low frequency voltage.
