Liquid-crystalline blue phase II system comprising a bent-core molecule with a wide stable temperature range.

A thermodynamically stable blue phase II (BPII) has been prepared, and its electrooptical (EO) performance has been evaluated in a host system of a conventional rodlike nematogen mixed with a bent-core molecule. For the mixed system presented, the widest temperature range of BPII stability, during cooling/heating, was >6 °C. This range is much wider than those of conventional nematogens blended with chiral dopants.

Liquid-crystalline blue phase laser with widely tunable wavelength.

A lasing peak shift of more than 100 nm is realized due to the large shift of a photonic bandgap of a liquid-crystalline blue phase.

Photoisomerization-induced stable liquid crystalline cubic blue phase.

We have succeeded in obtaining a photoinduced liquid crystalline cubic BP in a mixture of photoinactive and photoresponsive bent-core mesogens. The UV stimulus can convert N* to cubic BP through photoisomerization of the azobenzene linkages included in the photoresponsive bent-core molecule.

A vertical-field-driven polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal mode to obtain a higher transmittance and lower driving voltage.

We demonstrate a vertical-field-driven polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (PS-BPLC) mode for solving low transmittance and high driving voltage problems in conventional in-plane-switching (IPS) PS-BPLC modes. By controlling the ray directions of incident beams by means of two prism sheets attached to the top and bottom substrates, continuous grayscale properties can be achieved with a vertical field, where the transmittance of the proposed structure can be increased to become twice as high as that of a IPS PS-BPLC cell, and its driving voltage can also be lowered by about 20 V. With the vertical-field-driven PS-BPLC mode, the hysteresis problem of the IPS PS-BPLC mode can also be solved due to a reduction of the electric field required to achieve sufficient field-induced retardation.