Electro-optical properties of smectic liquid crystal-polymer composite with a negative dispersion of birefringence

• The extraordinary and ordinary refractive indices ne and no of the pure liquid crystal and liquid crystal-polymer composite were measured.
• The dependence of the transmittance and the color shift on the viewing angle were simulated.
• The liquid crystal-polymer composite with negative dispersion of birefringence showed wider viewing angle and smaller color shift.

Two-dimensionally self-organized smectic liquid crystal (LC)-polymer composite has been reported to show a negative dispersion of birefringence [H. Lee and J.-H. Lee, Opt. Lett. 39, 5146 (2014)]. In this paper, we separately measured the extraordinary and ordinary refractive indices ne and no of the pure LC and LC-polymer composite and simulated the dependence of the transmittance and the color on the viewing angle for the display application. The LC-polymer composite with the negative dispersion property showed a wider viewing angle and a smaller color shift compared to the pure liquid crystal with a positive dispersion of birefringence.