Dynamics of liquid crystal on hexagonal lattice

TL;DR

This paper explores how liquid crystal molecules on hexagonal surfaces can be controlled with electric pulses to create dynamic, low-power, high-resolution displays, supported by theoretical calculations of molecule-surface interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for reorienting liquid crystals on hexagonal lattices using electric pulses, proposing a new paradigm for non-volatile display technology.

Findings

Electric pulses can reorient LC molecules along preferred directions.

Multiple color states achieved by varying electric pulse parameters.

Theoretical calculations identify favorable adsorption configurations.

Abstract

Nematic liquid crystal (LC) molecules adsorbed on two dimensional materials are aligned along the crystal directions of the hexagonal lattice. It was demonstrated that short electric pulses can reorient the aligned LC molecules in the preferred armchair direction of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Several states with a variety of colors were obtained by changing the direction and strength of the electric pulses. The ab initio calculations based on density functional theory was carried out to determine the favorable adsorption configurations of the LC molecules on the h-BN surface. A non-volatile display, in which pixel resolution can be determined by grains of hexagonal surface, is proposed, which can offer a pathway towards dynamic high-quality pixels with low power consumption, and could define a new paradigm for all non-volatile display applications.