Improvement in Planar Orientation of the Polymer-Stabilized Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Cells

We investigate the effects of thermal annealing on the improvement in the planar orientation of the polymer-stabilized cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) cell. The obtained results reveal that annealing the CLC/monomer mixture at the CLC-isotropic transition temperature (T-ei) effectively reduces the viscosity of the CLC/monomer mixture, accelerating the annihilation of oily streaks. Increasing the annealing time effectively removes the oily streaks, giving the polymer-stabilized CLC cell a high transmittance and a sharp stop band edge. An 8-mu m-thick polymer-stabilized CLC cell with a defect-free planar texture is achieved when the annealing time of the cell exceeds 10 min. [DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.47.8515]