Electrooptical Properties of Aligned Dye-doped Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal Films

Abstract

We investigate how plane-parallel and twisted alignment treatments influence the electrooptical properties of dye-doped polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films. These films are transparent in the electric field-on state and opaque in the field-off state. The relationship between field-off state transmittance of such dye-doped PDLC films and polarization of the incident light is discussed. Experimental data confirm that, even for unpolarized incident light, the contrast ratio of these aligned films surpasses that of a nonaligned dye-doped PDLC film.