Patent ID: 8106674

Claim:
A method for measuring physical properties of liquid crystals comprising: 1. Providing a liquid crystal cell with a sample; 2. Ramping the liquid crystal cell to the desired temperature; 3. Applying a voltage to the sample in a predetermined pattern; 4. Balancing the capacitance and resistance of the cell against a known value, thereby nulling the cell, to obtain the capacitance and resistance of the LC; or 5. Alternatively, using quadrature with cosine stimulation to measure LC capacitance, independent of resistance; 6. Increasing the value of the voltage in a periodic stepwise fashion to a next value; 7. Repeating steps (3 and 4) or (3 and 5) until a CV curve is obtained at one temperature value; 8. Determining the relationship between the theoretical and experimental CV curve through statistical analysis such as least squares fit to generate more accurate values of the elastic and dielectric constants; 9. Increasing the temperature to the next desired increment (higher or lower) and repeating steps 3 through 8; 10. Determining the liquid crystal transition temperature by scanning the temperature vs. capacitance and noting the change in the slope of the C vs. T curve to mark each liquid crystal transition; 11. Repeating steps 3-8 until all desired physical properties have been obtained; 12. Performing statistical analysis of multiple measurements of the same cell, or same measurement of multiple cells to generate statistical results including one or more of mean, standard deviation, variance, minimum, maximum, and the range of the specified set of LC cell or cells.