Characterization of nematic liquid crystals at microwave frequencies

Abstract

The use of nematic liquid crystal (LC) mixtures for microwave frequency applications presents a fundamental drawback: many of these mixtures have not been properly characterized at these frequencies, and researchers do not have an a priori clear idea of which behavior they can expect. This work is focused on developing a new procedure for the extraction of the main parameters of a nematic liquid crystal: dielectric permittivity and loss tangent at 11 GHz under different polarization voltages; splay elastic constant K11, which allows calculation of the threshold voltage (Vth); and rotational viscosity γ11, which allows calculating the response time of any arbitrary device. These properties will be calculated by using a resonator-based method, which is implemented with a new topology of substrate integrated transmission line. The LC molecules should be rotated (polarized) by applying an electric field in order to extract the characteristic parameters; thus, the transmission line needs to have two conductors and low electric losses in order to preserve the integrity of the measurements. This method was applied to a well-known liquid crystal mixture (GT3-23002 from MERCK) obtaining the permittivity and loss tangent versus bias voltage curves, the splay elastic constant, and the rotational viscosity of the mixture. The results validate the viability of the proposed method.