1. Liquid Crystalline Amorphous Blue Phase: Tangled Topological Defects, Polymer-stabilization, and Device Application
- Author
-
Kim, Min Su
- Subjects
- Materials Science, Physics, Optics, Polymers, Liquid crystal, Blue phase, Amorphous blue phase, Defects, Polymer-stabilization, Electro-optics, Chirality
- Abstract
Blue phases arise from self-assembly of short-pitch chiral nematic liquid crystals by three- dimensional topological defects in thermodynamic equilibria for periodic cubic-type blue phases and aperiodic amorphous blue phase. Although its structure has been theoretically predicted, the mysterious entanglement of disclinations in amorphous blue phase has not been thoroughly investigated because of its thermodynamic instability with narrow temperature range. This dissertation is focused on several aspects in the liquid crystalline amorphous blue phase such as three-dimensional self-assembled nanostructure consisting of tangled disclinations, wide temperature amorphous blue phase by help of photo-polymerized polymer network, and electro-optical properties after the stabilization. Furthermore, the polymer network manifests the imitation of internal defect structure of amorphous blue phase, which enables to observe the visualized structure of disclinations by breaking the paradox retaining the internal defect structure. Also, refilling achiral nematic liquid crystals to the fabricated polymer templates gives rise to induced stabilized blue phases. The author believes such studies will contribute to the fields of blue phase liquid crystal physics, electro-optical device application, and polymer template fabrication.
- Published
- 2015