ABSTRACT Mini-LED backlit liquid crystal display (LCD) exhibits premium display performance, benefiting from the new design space enabled by the mini-LED backlight unit: the flexibility in subframe sequential illumination enables motion blur reduction; the selective illumination of bright zones and dark zones offers high dynamic range, good sunlight readability and power saving; the high zone density suppresses the visual artefact of ‘halo effect’ that is commonly observed in conventional local dimming LCDs. In this paper, we discuss limiting factors and solutions to achieve high display fidelity regarding the abovementioned performance metrics.

ABSTRACT The search for novel materials and technologies with improved performance increased in the last decades. In particular, ionic liquid crystals (ILCs), a modern class of advanced materials that benefits from the synergistic properties of ionic liquids and liquid crystals, are playing an important role in different areas of knowledge, attracting the interest of the academia and industry, driven by their peculiar tailoring ability. Herein, it comprises a brief synopsis of several pyridinium and picolinium ILCs previously prepared to understand how their mesomorphism and conductivity profiles are affected by small structural changes in terms of the methyl group position and alkyl chain length, providing important insights into future design of functional materials by a simple anionic exchange. Moreover, microwave-assisted reactions were emphasised as a simple and greener synthetic method to prepare ionic liquid crystals through alkylation, which can also be applied to other organic salts.

ABSTRACT Fibre structures of liquid crystals are of particular interest because they are expected to be used in optical fibres, optical devices, and lasers. Micrometre- sized liquid crystal self-assembly demonstrates new optical functions or interfacial interactions which cannot be observed in the bulk. Thermotropic liquid crystals organize fibres by phase transitions or shape changes. The fibrous self- assembly of liquid crystal made by self-organisation was reviewed in the study. We will also introduce the characteristics of these fibres as well as those of lyotropic myelin and lyotropic fibres. Theoretical research on the growth mechanism and physical properties of the fibres has also been summarized.

ABSTRACT Structure and optical transmission properties of spontaneously formed diffraction gratings by bent-core liquid crystalline materials that exhibit a twist-bend nematic (NTB) phase transition, when confined in thin planar cells are reported. We begin with experimentally measuring the polarisation properties of diffraction peaks up to the second-order and observe a generalised behaviour of polarisation of the first-order peaks. Moreover, we show that the study of the second-order diffraction peaks combined with the proposed preliminary model can be an effective tool to predict the spatial variation of the optic axis. Then, we build a continuum model that describes the formation of gratings as a result of competition between surface conditions and bulk strain due to the shrinking of pseudo-layers and determine the threshold conditions on the onset of a 2D pseudo-layer structure of the NTB phase. We use the beam propagation method and transfer matrix method to calculate the transmissivity of diffracted light by using the spatial variation of the optic axis determined from the modelled structure. It is established that the beam propagation method is superior to the transfer matrix method.

ABSTRACT The interplay between gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and liquid crystals (LCs) opens compelling solutions that produce a win-win solution for both classes of materials. AuNPs are successfully utilised to induce a controlled phase change of LCs and, simultaneously, LCs make an active control of the AuNPs optical properties. LC plasmonics generates hybrid materials that could revolutionise next-generation optical and photonic applications in this framework.