The project designs, creates and evaluates new liquid crystalline and polymeric materials and architectures with tailored properties and examines new effects in liquid crystals and polymers. Examples of new materials include high birefringence nematics, dichroic dyes, and new architectures.
Researchers study and model order parameters, phase transitions, defects, and elasticity.
The project focuses on improving the performance of liquid crystal devices and developing new device technologies. These improvements are sought through detailed modeling and characterization of devices as well as through development of new materials for passive optical components such as retardation layers, substrates, and polarizers. The goals for nematic liquid crystal displays are improvements in viewing angle, brightness, and chromaticity with good gray level performance. New concepts for lower power, bistable displays are being developed. Mathematical modeling of device optics plays a central role in the effort, providing guidance for new materials development and optical film design.