Theoretical and experimental optical studies of cholesteric liquid crystal films with thermally induced pitch gradients

Dimitrios C. Zografopoulos, Emmanouil E. Kriezis, Michel Mitov, and Corinne Binet

Phys. Rev. E 73, 061701 – Published 6 June 2006

Abstract

The reflection properties of cholesteric films with thermally induced pitch gradients are theoretically and experimentally studied. It is shown that the optical behavior of such films corresponds to the averaged contribution of a number of stochastic pitch variation profiles, due to the transversal and longitudinal nonuniformities that develop in the helical structure of such samples. Depending on the annealing time, both narrow-band and broadband behavior can be selectively achieved. The influence of the pitch profile gradient on the broadband reflection performance of cholesteric samples is theoretically analyzed, and a multi-slab structure for achieving optimum efficiency is proposed.

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Received 21 December 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.73.061701

Authors & Affiliations

Dimitrios C. Zografopoulos and Emmanouil E. Kriezis^*

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki GR-54124, Greece

Michel Mitov^† and Corinne Binet^‡

Centre d’Élaboration de Matériaux et d’Études Structurales, CEMES, CNRS, Boîte Postale 94347, 31055 Toulouse Cedex 4, France

^*Electronic address: mkriezis@auth.gr
^†Electronic address: mitov@cemes.fr
^‡Now at: Laboratoire de Dynamique et Structure des Matériaux Moléculaires, UMR 8024 CNRS, UST Lille, F-59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France.

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Vol. 73, Iss. 6 — June 2006

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Physical Review E

covering statistical, nonlinear, biological, and soft matter physics