Simple and efficient chiral dopants to induce blue phases and their optical purity effects on the physical properties of blue phases.

Abstract

Blue phases (BPs) have received considerable attention as light shutters in the next generation of liquid crystal (LC) displays. However, no simple and efficient chiral dopant for induction of BPs of commercially available rodlike LC compounds has been reported. In this study, both (R) and (S) forms of novel chiral dopants were synthesized, showed extremely high helical twisting power values in nematic LC compounds, and induced stable BPs with a small amount of our chiral dopants (3-5 mol %). In enantiomeric excess controlled experiments, we found novel phenomena in their physical properties, such as generation of a metastable chiral nematic phase between an isotropic state and a BP.