Development of chiral smectic C materials for multiplexed display applications

Abstract

The practice is well established, of formulating ferroelectric liquid crystal mixtures by use of a laterally polar chiral dopant dissolved in a wide temperature range liquid crystal host having a tilted smectic phase. This approach is valuable as it allows molecular engineering of each component of the mixture in order to optimise its properties: the chiral dopant for example need not possess any liquid crystal phase in its own right. Work has previously been described in which laterally fluorinated esters of structure I are used to formulate a smectic C base mixture, which is then doped with naphthalene esters of 2-octanol (11) to impart ferroelectric properties.