Applications of Liquid Crystalline Polymers in Information Storage

APPLICATIONS OF LIQUID CRYSTALLINE POLYMERS IN INFORMATION STORAGE 

In principle, liquid crystalline polymers can be applied in displays. Unfortunately, the response of them to the external fields isn t satisfactory because their viscosity is greater than the small molecular mass liquid crystals by a few orders of magnitude. In fact, only when the temperature is near the glass transition temperature, can the response be measured in seconds. Apparently, this is far from the real requirement. One may mix the liquid crystalline polymer with small molecular mass liquid crystal for such a purpose, but the mixture doesn t show an advantage over the small molecular mass liquid crystal displays. The ferroelectric liquid crystalline polymer is an exception. It works with a very fast effect and can achieve a display with a response time of a few milliseconds or a fewr tens of milliseconds. 

On the other hand, liquid crystalline polymers applied to optical information storage has attracted great attention. The liquid crystalline polymer is applied mainly in terms of the thermo-optical effect. The backbone of liquid crystalline polymer can be polysiloxane, polyacrylate, or polyesters. In order to enhance the absorption coefficient for the writing laser beam, the dyes may be either dissolved into the liquid crystalline polymer in the guest-host model or attached to the backbone of the liquid crystalline polymer to form a copolymer. The nematic, cholesteric and smectic liquid crystalline polymers are all be able to be utilized in optical information storage. 

---