Cholesteric as One-Dimensional Photonic Crystal

Cholesteric Liquid Crystal as a One-Dimensional Photonic Crystal... 

Chapters 1-5 cover the basic physics and optical properties of liquid crystals intended for beginning workers in liquid crystal related areas. Although the major focus is on nematics, we have included sufficient discussions on other mesophases of liquid crystals such as the smectics, ferroelectrics, and cholesterics to enable the readers to proceed to more advanced or specialized topics elsewhere. New sections have also been added. For example, in Chapter 4, a particularly important addition is a quantitative discussion of the optical properties and fundamentals of one-dimensional photonic crystal band stractures. Dispersion is added to fill in an important gap in most treatments of cholesteric liqrrid crystals. 

As discussed in Chapter 5, chiral liquid crystals exhibit modulated groimd states and are therefore self-assembled PEG materials. The simplest of them is the cholesteric liquid crystal, which is a one-dimensional photonic band-gap material if the helical pitch is in the visible wavelength range. As illustrated in Chapter 5, such structure leads to selective reflection rendering a color to the material. The helical—and therefore the color—is sensitive to... 

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