Abstract
Unique electro-optical properties of the oblique helicoidal cholesteric () stem from its heliconical director structure. An applied electric field preserves the single-harmonic modulation of the director while tuning the period and the corresponding Bragg-peak wavelength within a broad spectral range. We use the response of to the electric field to measure the elastic constants of twist and bend directly in the cholesteric phase. The temperature dependencies of and allow us to determine the range of the electric tunability of the pitch and the heliconical angle. The data are important for understanding how molecular composition and chirality influence macroscopic elastic properties of the chiral liquid crystals and for the development of -based optical devices.
3 More- Received 29 March 2022
- Accepted 4 May 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.106.024702
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society