The relationship between material parameters of host nematic liquid crystals (LCs) and Kerr constant of their nanostructured chiral LC composites was investigated. We made certain that the Kerr constant of nanostrutured chiral LC composites was closely related to the parameters of their host LCs, such as value of the difference of refractive index (Δn), the dielectric anisotropy (Δε), and bend to splay elastic constant ratio (K33∕K11).

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We prepared a nonchiral mixture of achiral bent-core molecules and photoresponsive rodlike liquid crystalline (LC) molecules. With the help of the isothermal photochemical nematic (N)-isotropic (Iso) phase transition of the photoresponsive rodlike LC molecules, the corresponding phase transition from a dark conglomerate BX phase to another distinguishable dark conglomerate B4 phase took place in the mixture. A large circular dichroism (CD) signal originating from supramolecular chirality was detected in the initial BX phase. On the other hand, the detected CD signal was decreased in the B4 phase after UV irradiation. Interestingly, the decreased CD signal could be reverted to the initial CD signal with visible irradiation. This chiroptical process revealed in this work was stable and reversible and thus opens up the possibility of practical applications such as rewritable optical storage.

Upon UV irradiation of a bent-core liquid crystal (LC) bearing an azo linkage doped with chiral molecules, a photo-induced transition takes place from BPI to BPIII. BPIII is stabilised over 20 C, while the widening of the BPI range is not so remarkable. The mechanism of photo-induced BPI-BPIII transition is also discussed.

We demonstrate an intriguing liquid crystal display (LCD) mode that comprises an optically isotropic LC composite incorporating in-plane electric field geometry. No surface treatment, such as rubbing, is required to fabricate the LCD mode because it is based on an isotropic state. The measured response time is of submillisecond order. This rapid response originates from the local reorientation of molecules in small LC clusters as well as from strong polymer stabilization. The LCD mode has several unique features such as fast response, continuous greyscale capability and a high contrast ratio.