Investigation into chiral active waveplates

An examination into a chiral liquid crystal active waveplate device using a one-dimensional model, giving numerical results, is presented. The model calculates the director and flow configuration by minimizing the free energy of the chiral nematic modeled with fixed boundary conditions. The static case of varying the flexoclectric coefficients, electric field magnitude, and dielectric anisotropy is examined and it is shown that both flexoelectricity and dielectric effects alter the birefringence of the device in the presence of an electric field. The dynamic reaction to a rotating electric field is then examined. (C) 2006 American Institute of Physics.