Effect of SiO₂ nanoparticle doping on electro-optical properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal lens for smart electronic glasses

In this paper, SiO₂ nanoparticle doped polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) lenses were made from a mixture of prepolymer, E7 liquid crystal and SiO₂ nanoparticles by the polymerization induced phase separation (PIPS) process for smart electronic glasses with auto-shading and auto-focusing functions. Electro-optical properties of doped and undoped samples including transmittance, driving voltage, contrast ratio and slope of the linear region of the transmittance-voltage were measured, compared and analyzed. Driving voltage of SiO₂ nanoparticle doped PDLC lenses moderately improved. But the slope of linear region, response time and contrast ratio deteriorated, especially the latter two. It can be assumed that these doping effects were due to the mechanistic change from liquid-gel separation to liquid-liquid separation by the fast heterogeneous nucleation rate caused by the increased nucleation at the surface of SiO₂ nanoparticles. The marked deteriorations of falling response time and contrast ratio were due to well defined liquid crystal molecules in LC droplets, which induced slow and imperfect random rearrangement of LC molecules at the off state.