Search

We report the synthesis of organic polymer optical fibers with the following interesting supermolecular stereochemistry: 1)A thermodynamically stable macroscopic polar axis oriented approximately normal to the fiber axis: and 2) A nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore oriented along the polar axis. Such a polymer fiber has been created using a main-chain ferroelectric liquid crystal polymer (FLCP) frozen in the glassy state at room temperature. The material is composed of "side-by-side twin" mesogens wherein the DR-1 NLO chromophore is oriented normal to the director. The polymer, which possesses excellent liquid crystal and glass transition temperatures for the present study, was prepared by acyclic diene metathesis polymerization of a liquid crystal diene. Details of the layer and director structure in the FLCP glasses are under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanoimprint lithographically (NIL) prepared polymer film replicas of micrometer scale topographic master patterns are used as liquid crystal alignment surfaces. Depolarized transmission light microscopy study of nematic liquid crystal cells made using the replicas as one window shows that the NIL generated linear line patterns and two-dimensional square grid patterns align the liquid crystal in planar mono- and bistable states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic contribution to the second-order nonlinear polarizability of a ferroelectric liquid-crystal phase formed by the spontaneously polar organization of bent-core molecules has been demonstrated. Application of a 40 MHz driving voltage and measurement of the refractive index modulation of light of wavelength 1.3 μm yields electrooptic coefficients r∼10 pm/V, comparable to that found in poled polymers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]