Holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals using vinyltrimethoxysilane

Various amounts of vinyltrimethoxysilane (VTMOS) have been added to the conventional grating formulation of transmission holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal (HPDLC) based polyurethane acrylate (PUA). With the addition and increasing amount of VTMOS, contact angle of the film with LC and droplet size of LC monotonically increased, implying that VTMOS segments of the polymers are preferentially exposed to the surfaces and provided greater immiscibility with LC molecules giving rise to an increase in droplet size of LC. However, with VTMOS content over 6 wt%, droplets were coalesced to sizes for random scatterings to lower the off state diffraction efficiency below that of virgin PUA. VTMOS was essential to drive the film by lowering the anchoring strength. The operating voltage monotonically decreased with increasing VTMOS content with a minimum switching voltage of about 15 V with response time of about 8 ms.