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External-Voltage-Free Dielectrophoresis of Liquid Crystal Droplets

External-Voltage-Free Dielectrophoresis of Liquid Crystal Droplets

Authors :
Jia De Lin
Chia Rong Lee
Shuan Yu Huang
Hui Chen Yeh
Sheng Kuang Wu
Ting Shan Mo
Lin Jer Chen
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.

Details

ISSN :
20734352
Volume :
7
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Crystals
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....451463b1533902b4e8f65c8e56faefb3
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst7070202