Probing the effect of chiral dopant fluorination on dielectric and electro-optical properties of the ferroelectric liquid crystalline mixture

Abstract

In this article, fluorinated chiral dopant-assisted tuning of dielectric and electro-optical properties of a ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) material is presented. Five new FLC mixtures with room temperature ferroelectric phase were formulated by fluorinating the phenyl core of chiral dopant at different positions and with a different number of fluorine atoms. The dielectric and electro-optical properties of all the FLC mixtures were systematically studied. It is found that the permittivity value of ferroelectric mesogens can be tuned between 5 and 36 (at 100 Hz) with fluorination. Also, the dielectric loss factor decreases owing to fluorination of chiral dopant with a shift in phason mode relaxation towards the low-frequency side. In addition, there is a significant change in material parameters of FLC, such as phase transition temperature, response time, spontaneous polarization, and rotational viscosity due to fluorination in chiral dopant. The presence of highly electronegative fluorine acts as a source of potentially repulsive force. It partially screens the molecular chirality of the dopant, which resulted in a change in the material parameters of FLCs. Interestingly, there is no considerable change in the mesogenic structure and orientation with the addition of fluorine, which is confirmed through wide-angle X-ray scattering. These studies open up a new avenue for tailoring the dielectric and electro-optical properties of mesogens for advanced device applications based on FLCs.