Pitches chiral nematics

The ability of the chiral 2-methylbutyl moiety to generate very short pitch chiral nematic phases was by now widely recognised. It was not therefore surprising that a number of research groups should attempt... 

There is a further geometry of practical interest for light incident on chiral nematic films, related to the pitch of the helix in which we consider light propagating in a direction normal to the helix axis, i.e., as in the fingerprint texture, but with a pitchp less than A. In this short pitch chiral nematic case, the chiral optical tensor is averaged in space and the macroscopic optic axis is col-linear with the helix axis [27]. The macro-... 

The majority of current commercial liquid crystal displays are based on the twisted nematic electrooptic effect using active matrices to give, for example, complex computer lap-top screens [13]. It is often overlooked that these displays are based on long pitch chiral nematic materials to remove so-called reverse twist, and the original papers [254, 255] referred to the effect as a positive planar cholesteric to nematic phase... 

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