Kent State University

University of Colorado

United States of America As Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

Anatoliy Volodymyrovych Glushchenko

John L West

Zbigniew Celinski

Robert Edwin Camley

Guoqiang Zhang

Ronald F Ziolo

John A Kosinski

Victor Yu Reshetnyak

Thomas M Cooper

Yuriy Reznikov

Aaron R Burke

Yurii Reznikov

Chae Il Cheon

Fenghua Li

Yuri Garbovskiy

A nanoparticle-enhanced liquid crystal phase shifter is provided including a first substrate layer, a plurality of electrodes attached to the substrate layer, a ground plane layer attached to a second substrate layer, and a liquid crystal layer between the ground plane layer and the first substrate layer, including a suspension of a liquid crystal material and highly polarizable nanoparticles having specific shape and size characteristics.

Nanoparticle-enhanced liquid crystal radio frequency phase shifter

A cholesteric liquid crystal. The liquid crystal includes a metal acetylide, of which the metal is a square, planar transition metal. The metal acetylide includes first and second acylphosphine ligands and first and second phenyl acetylene ligands. Each of the first and second phenyl acetylene ligands have a meta- or para-substituent, which are selected from the group consisting of H, F, CN, OCH, C&#x2261;C&#x2014;CH,(COO&#x2014;CHO), and COO&#x2014;CH&#x2014;C))&#x2014;CHO.

Glassy cholesteric liquid crystalline metal acetylides

Systems and methods are described for producing liquid crystal devices microwave that use metal alignment layers. The liquid crystal microwave devices include a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between metal layers, which are further sandwiched between substrate layers. At least one of the metal layers is rubbed to form micro-grooves that tend to align the liquid crystal molecules adjacent to those layers without using additional rubbed polymeric layers for the alignment. The thickness of the metal layers can be selected to yield a desired electromagnetic effect, such as constraint of propagation of microwave radiation.

Metallic surfaces as alignment layers for nondisplay applications of liquid crystals

A new light modulating material using interconnected unidirectionally oriented microdomains of a liquid crystal, dispersed in a stressed polymer structure, is provided. The light modulating material is prepared by dissolving the liquid crystal in an uncured monomer and then curing the monomer so that the polymer forms a well-developed interpenetrating structure of polymer chains or sheets that is uniformly dispersed through the film. When the film is subjected to stress deformation the liquid crystal undergoes a change in its unidirectional orientation. The concentration of the polymer is high enough to hold the shear stress, but is as low as possible to provide the highest switch of the phase retardation when an electric field is applied. The new materials are optically transparent and provide phase modulation of the incident light opposed to the low driving voltage, linear electro-optical response, and absence of hysteresis. It has been shown that these new materials may be successfully used in display applications, optical modulator, and beam steering devices.

Stressed liquid crystals materials for light modulation

A liquid crystal device comprises ferroelectric particles suspended in a liquid crystal material. A method for fabricating a light-modulating device is also disclosed. The method comprises the steps of providing a pair of substrates with a cell gap therebetween, wherein electrodes are disposed on the facing surfaces of the substrates, and permanently disposing a suspension of ferroelectric particles in a liquid crystal material into said cell gap. A method of generating an image comprises providing a pair of substrates with a cell gap therebetween, providing transparent electrodes on each of said substrates adjacent to the cell gap, permanently disposing a suspension of ferroelectric particles in a liquid crystal material within the cell gap, and applying an electric field across the electrodes.

Material for liquid crystal cell

This disclosure outlines a new method of modifying the properties of existing liquid crystals by doping them with ferroelectric micro- and nanoparticles. We show that this approach, in contrast to the traditional time consuming and expensive chemical synthetic methods, enriches and enhances the electro-optical performance of many liquid crystal materials. We demonstrate that by changing the concentration and type of ferroelectric particles the physical properties of the nematic, smectic, and cholesteric liquid crystal materials can be changed, including the dielectric constants, the birefringence, the phase transition temperatures, and even the order parameter. We also demonstrate the performance of these new materials in various devices, including displays, light modulators, and beam steering devices.

Non-synthetic method for modifying properties of liquid crystals

A new light modulating material using unidirectionally oriented micro-domains of liquid crystal separated by polymer chains is provided. Liquid crystal/polymer films are produced by a one step production process involving a photopolymerizable monomer mixed with a liquid crystal then exposed to UV light. In one embodiment, force deformations are applied to the films resulting in diffraction efficiencies of more than 95%. In another embodiment, applying a planar force to a thick film that produced a 2 &#x3bc;m shift of phase retardation in several hundred microseconds when an appropriate field is applied. Use of this invention provides fast response time and a low required driving voltage. The new cell can be used as spatial light modulators for manufacturing information displays, electro-optical devices, telecommunications system, optical data processing, adaptive optics applications, color projection displays and switchable micro-lens optics.

Stressed liquid crystals as an ultra-fast light modulating material consisting of unidirectionally oriented liquid crystal micro-domains separated by polymer chains

Growing community of inventors

Colorado Springs, CO, United States of America

Anatoliy Volodymyrovych Glushchenko