Temperature-independent pitch invariance in cholesteric liquid crystal

Abstract

We report a pitch invariance in cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) independent of temperature by mixing two chiral dopants. One dopant tends to shorten the helical pitch of the CLC, but the other makes the pitch longer, with increasing temperatures. From an analysis of temperature dependencies of the pitch for each dopant, we determined the mixing ratio of two chiral dopants for the pitch invariance. Finally, we obtained the pitch-invariant CLCs to temperature and the helical twisting power of the mixed dopant was estimated. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America