In recent years, demand for smart windows with dimming and other functions has been increasing, e.g., polymer dispersed liquid crystals. Liquid crystal (LC) gels also have the potential for smart glass applications owing to their light-scattering properties. In this study, LC gels were prepared by mixing nematic LC (E7) with poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl) (PFO) as a gelator. The LC gel formed a dense PFO network as the concentration increased. The PFO network structure changed in response to the change in the cooling rate. High contrast ratio of light scattering was obtained for the LC gel device that was fabricated via the 2-wt%-doping of PFO and natural cooling. Furthermore, the PFO concentration and cooling rate were found to affect the response time of the LC gel device.

In this study, we have proposed a millimeter-wave (MMW) single-pixel imaging (SPI) system with a liquid-crystal (LC) mask cell. The LC cell functions as an electrically switchable mask based on the change in absorption properties, which depend on the orientation of the LC. We investigated the influence of noise on the measured and estimated data (reconstructed image). The proposed system exhibited moderate robustness against random noise (that were added) compared to raster scan-based and Hadamard matrix-based SPI systems. Finally, the results of some demonstrative experiments were introduced to ensure the applicability of the constructed MMW-SPI system, and steps for improving the reconstructed image quality were discussed.

Liquid crystal (LC) device has high tunability with low power consumption and it is important not only in visible region but also in terahertz region. In this study, birefringence and absorption losses of hydrogen-bonded LC was estimated at 2.5 THz. Our results indicate that introduction of alkoxy chain to hydrogen-bonded LC is effective to increase birefringence in terahertz region. These results indicate that hydrogen-bonded LCs are a strong candidate for future terahertz devices because of their excellent properties in the terahertz region.