Guest-host approach to reduce driving voltages in electro optic liquid crystal devices

We describe a simple guest-host approach allowing the reduction of driving voltages in liquid crystal (LC) electro optic devices via the increase of the effective dielectric anisotropy. This is achieved by doping the nematic LC host by molecules possessing high dipole moments. Polarimetric experiments suggest that guest molecules might form “polar clusters” that are providing collective, synergistic enhancement of the dielectric response to the external field.