Sub 100 Nanosecond Pretilted Planar-to-Homeotropic Reorientation of Nematic Liquid Crystals under High Electric Field

The pretilted planar-to-homeotropic reorientation transition of nematic liquid crystals with positive dielectric anisotropy is achieved with a record fast risetime, as fast as 40ns, by employing a customized electro-optic cell with small area and cell gap and with metal-coated electrodes and by applying electric fields up to several hundred volts/micron. The risetime dependence on the applied electric field is compared to a uniform director model which ignores surface and flow effects, based on Leslie-Ericksen continuum theory.