Impact of co-doping concentration in copolymer network liquid crystals

The impact of varying the co-doping concentration of a mesogenic and a non-mesogenic monomer in the reactive mixtures used to create a copolymer network LCs was investigated. Use of copolymer has been found to improve the response properties in the obtained liquid crystal composites. The polymer network in the studied copolymer network LCs was examined by scanning electron microscopy and the response times in various samples were investigated. Samples were prepared with various reactive mixtures, each of which had a constant concentration of mesogenic monomer, various concentrations of non-mesogenic monomer, and the same amount of photoinitiator. These reactive mixtures were filled in home assembled test cells with planar alignment and then exposed to UV light. With increasing concentration of the non-mesogenic monomer, the response properties of the resulting copolymer network LC were improved. Usually, if the overall polymer content in a polymer network LC is increased, the threshold voltage is also increased. However, both threshold voltages and response times were lowered and the response properties were thus improved in the studied copolymer network LCs. This unexpected behavior could be traced back to inducing a grainy polymer morphology of the copolymer network by using a non-mesogenic monomer.