Optical enhancement of dye-doped PDLC by additional dye-LC layer coating

Abstract

Dye-doped PDLC has a high probability to be used as reflective optical shutter due to its good reflectance compared to normal PDLC or LC shutter structures. The black state can be significantly enhanced by the minimized surface scattering between polymer and LC surface, which makes a harmful result to the contrast ratio, one of most important factors for optical shutter. To remove this scattering effect, we have developed new combinational structure, consisted of guest dye-doped LC (DLC) and dye-doped PDLC (DPDLC). In the newly fabricated dye-doped PDLC structure, the front location of dye-doped LC layer can remove the light scattering effect of the surface of single dye PDLC structure. The proposed process can also remove the randomly distributed dyes in polymer area of dye PDLC. This technique enhances the reflectance as well as the contrast ratio. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.