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External-Voltage-Free Dielectrophoresis of Liquid Crystal Droplets
External-Voltage-Free Dielectrophoresis of Liquid Crystal Droplets
- Source :
- Crystals, Vol 7, Iss 7, p 202 (2017)
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- MDPI AG, 2017.
-
Abstract
- This work reports, for the first time, a dielectrophoresis (DEP) effect-induced motion of liquid crystal (LC) droplets in an LC/monomer mixture sample with a poly-(N-vinyl carbazole) PVK-coated substrate without an external voltage. With the UV pre-irradiation of the PVK layer through a binary mask, a laterally non-uniform electric field can be induced between the pre-illuminated regions and the neighboring non-pre-illuminated PVK regions near the borders of the two regions. The phase separation occurs once the temperature is lower than 50 °C and the LC droplets can form in the sample. The pre-formed non-uniform field provides a DEP-like force to manipulate the small LC microdroplets in the pre-illuminated regions to effectively migrate to the adjacent non-pre-illuminated regions. The continuous supply of the LC from the pre-illuminated regions to the adjacent non-pre-illuminated regions significantly increases the diffraction efficiency of the grating sample. This study provides an insight into developing new external-voltage-free DEP-based devices that can be applied on various fields, such as photonics, displays, and biomedicines.
- Subjects :
- dielectrophoresis
Materials science
business.industry
General Chemical Engineering
Analytical chemistry
Substrate (electronics)
monomer
Grating
Dielectrophoresis
Condensed Matter Physics
Diffraction efficiency
Inorganic Chemistry
poly-(N-vinyl carbazole)
Liquid crystal
Electric field
lcsh:QD901-999
Optoelectronics
General Materials Science
liquid crystal
lcsh:Crystallography
Photonics
business
Voltage
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 20734352
- Volume :
- 7
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Crystals
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....451463b1533902b4e8f65c8e56faefb3
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst7070202