Davies, M. orcid.org/0000-0002-3486-3539, Hobbs, M.J., Nohl, J. et al. (3 more authors) (2022) Aerosol jet printing polymer dispersed liquid crystals on highly curved optical surfaces and edges. Scientific Reports, 12 (1). 18496. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
We demonstrate a new technique for producing Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) devices utilising aerosol jet printing (AJP). PDLCs require two substrates to act as scaffold for the Indium Tin Oxide electrodes, which restricts the device geometries. Our approach precludes the requirement for the second substrate by printing the electrode directly onto the surface of the PDLC, which is also printed. The process has the potential to be precursory to the implementation of non-contact printing techniques for a variety of liquid crystal-based devices on non-planar substrates. We report the demonstration of direct deposition of PDLC films onto non-planar optical surfaces, including a functional device printed over the 90° edge of a prism. Scanning Electron Microscopy is used to inspect surface features of the polymer electrodes and the liquid crystal domains in the host polymer. The minimum relaxation time of the PDLC was measured at 1.3 ms with an 800 Hz, 90 V, peak-to-peak (Vpp) applied AC field. Cross-polarised transmission is reduced by up to a factor of 3.9. A transparent/scattering contrast ratio of 1.4 is reported between 0 and 140 V at 100 Hz.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Electronic devices; Optical materials and structures |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/M009106/1 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/V012126/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Nov 2022 16:19 |
Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2022 16:19 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41598-022-23292-9 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193035 |