液晶光定向层材料

本文综述了近10年来液晶显示用光定向层材料领域的研究现状和进展情况，主要概述了光降解型、光致异构型、光交联型以及自组装等材料，并对目前报道的液晶光定向机理进行了总结和归纳。     

Aligning Text and Phonemes for Speech Technology Applications Using an EM-Like Algorithm

A common requirement in speech technology is to align two different symbolic representations of the same linguistic ‘message’. For instance, we often need to align letters of words listed in a dictionary with the corresponding phonemes specifying their pronunciation. As dictionaries become ever bigger, manual alignment becomes less and less tenable yet automatic alignment is a hard problem for a language like English. In this paper, we describe the use of a form of the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to learn alignments of English text and phonemes, starting from a variety of initializations. We use the British English Example Pronunciation (BEEP) dictionary of almost 200,000 words in this work. The quality of alignment is difficult to determine quantitatively since no ‘gold standard’ correct alignment exists. We evaluate the success of our algorithm indirectly from the performance of a pronunciation by analogy system using the aligned dictionary data as a knowledge base for inferring pronunciations. We find excellent performance—the best so far reported in the literature. There is very little dependence on the start point for alignment, indicating that the EM search space is strongly convex. Since the aligned BEEP dictionary is a potentially valuable resource, it is made freely available for research use.     

An evaluation of molecular models of the cytochrome P450 Streptomyces griseolus enzymes P450SU1 and P450SU2

Summary P450SU1 and P450SU2 are herbicide-inducible bacterial cytochrome P450 enzymes from Streptomyces griseolus. They have two of the highest sequence identities to camphor hydroxylase (P450cam from Pseudomonas putida), the cytochrome P450 with the first known crystal structure. We have built several models of these two proteins to investigate the variability in the structures that can occur from using different modeling protocols. We looked at variability due to alignment methods, backbone loop conformations and refinement methods. We have constructed two models for each protein using two alignment algorithms, and then an additional model using an identical alignment but different loop conformations for both buried and surface loops. The alignments used to build the models were created using the Needleman-Wunsch method, adapted for multiple sequences, and a manual method that utilized both a dotmatrix search matrix and the Needleman-Wunsch method. After constructing the initial models, several energy minimization methods were used to explore the variability in the final models caused by the choice of minimization techniques. Features of cytochrome P450cam and the cytochrome P450 superfamily, such as the ferredoxin binding site, the heme binding site and the substrate binding site were used to evaluate the validity of the models. Although the final structures were very similar between the models with different alignments, active-site residues were found to be dependent on the conformations of buried loops and early stages of energy minimization. We show which regions of the active site are the most dependent on the particular methods used, and which parts of the structures seem to be independent of the methods.     

Hydrophobic Molecular Similarity from MST Fractional Contributions to the Octanol/water Partition Coefficient

Summary The use of a recently proposed hydrophobic similarity index for the alignment of molecules and the prediction of their differences in biological activity is described. The hydrophobic similarity index exploits atomic contributions to the octanol/water transfer free energy, which are evaluated by means of the fractional partitioning scheme developed within the framework of the Miertus-Scrocco-Tomasi continuum model. Those contributions are used to define global and local measures of hydrophobic similarity. The suitability of this computational strategy is examined for two series of compounds (ACAT inhibitors and 5-HT₃ receptor agonists), which are aligned to maximize the global hydrophobic similarity using a Monte Carlo-simulated protocol. Indeed, the concept of local hydrophobic similarity is used to explore structure–activity relationships in a series of COX-2 inhibitors. Inspection of the 3D distribution of hydrophobic/hydrophilic contributions in the aligned molecules is valuable to identify regions of very similar hydrophobicity, which can define pharmacophoric recognition patterns. Moreover, low similar regions permit to identify structural elements that modulate the differences in activity between molecules. Finally, the quantitative relationships found between the pharmacological activity and the hydrophobic similarity index points out that not only the global hydrophobicity, but its 3D distribution, is important to gain insight into the activity of molecules. J.M.M. and S.P. have contributed equally to this study.     

Thermocapillary Alignment of Gas Bubbles Induced by Convective Transport

The effect of a weak convective heat transfer on the thermocapillary interaction of two bubbles with an arbitrary orientation relative to an externally imposed temperature gradient is examined. Asymptotic analysis of the case of large separation distances, Z, suggests that the corrections to the bubbles' velocities are of (Pe/Z²), rather than (Pe²) previously found for an isolated bubble. Equal-sized bubbles are known to move with the same velocities, as if they were isolated, when heat conduction is the only transport mechanism. However, the convective transport results in a relative motion of the bubbles. The tendency of equal bubbles to line up in a plane perpendicular to the applied thermal gradient is shown analytically in the weakly nonlinear limit of small Pe numbers, and an interesting interaction behavior in the case of unequal bubbles is discussed.     

New liquid‐crystal alignment agents based on fluorinated polyimides with trifluoromethyl‐substituted benzene or diphenylether in the side chain

Fluorinated copolyimides derived from 4,4′‐oxydiphthalic anhydride (ODPA) with 4,4′‐oxydianline (ODA) and trifluoromethyl‐containing aromatic diamines have been synthesized and characterized. The trifluoromethyl‐containing diamines include 2,4‐diamino‐3′‐trifluoromethylazobenzene, 2,4‐diamino‐1‐[(4′‐trifluoromethylphenoxy) phenyl] aniline, 3,5‐diamino‐1‐[(4′‐trifluoromethylphenoxy) phenyl] benzamide, 3,5‐diamino‐1‐[(3′‐trifluoromethyl) phenyl] benzamide, 1,4‐bis(4′‐aminophenoxy)‐2‐(3′‐trifluoromethylphenyl) benzene, 3,5‐diaminobenzenetrifluoride, 4,4′‐diamino‐4″‐(p‐trifluoromethyl phenoxy) triphenylamine, and 4‐[(4′‐trifluoromethylphenoxy) phenyl]‐2,6‐bis(4″‐aminophenyl)pyridine. Strong and flexible copolyimide films, produced by casting the polyamic acid solution followed by thermal imidization, exhibited great thermal stability and high mechanical properties. The polyimides had an ultraviolet–visible absorption cutoff at 330–340 nm and pretilt angles as high as 20° for nematic liquid crystals, making them great potential candidates for advanced liquid‐crystal display applications. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 40: 1583–1593, 2002     

神光-Ⅱ装置三倍频实验中靶场单元技术的改进

 主要介绍为了满足神光-Ⅱ高功率激光装置三倍频光（351nm，3ω）的物理实验要求，靶场三倍频模拟光源和瞄准监视系统两个主要单元技术的改进，即三倍频模拟光源由基频光（1 053nm，3ω）通过腔外的KTP+BBO晶体倍频获得，再经八路分光系统和主激光耦合；瞄准监视系统由透射式光学系统改进为反射式光学系统，避免原系统存在较大的色差，提高瞄准精度。     

Fabrication of photoluminescent liquid crystal device using an in situ self-assembled molecular layer of a pyrene derivative

An in situ self-assembled molecular layer of 1-pyrenesulfonic acid sodium salt as an alignment agent was formed on indium tin oxide substrates for vertically aligning liquid crystals (LCs). The thus-aligned LCs exhibited uniform vertical alignment under crossed polarisers. The electro-optical characteristic of the LC cell fabricated using this method exhibited better performance than those of conventional LC cells with a polyimide alignment layer. Because the proposed alignment method is a simple one and involves low concentrations of the alignment agent (0.05 wt%), it is highly cost-effective. Further, the pyrene derivative, when mixed with LCs, exhibited photoluminescence (PL) under ultraviolet light. Given that the proposed method resulted in highly vertically aligned LCs and the alignment agent exhibited PL, the method should find wide use in the fabrication of colour-filter-free LC displays.     

Fast switching of vertically aligned negative liquid crystals by optically hidden relaxation

We propose a method for fast switching of vertically aligned (VA) negative liquid crystals (LCs) by hiding the relaxation process of LCs. During the turn-off process, a strong in-plane electric field is applied for a short duration of time instead of relying solely on the slow relaxation of LCs. The LC molecules are rotated to the transmission axis of one of the polarisers by the applied in-plane electric field, resulting in turn-off switching that is 5.8 times faster than that of a conventional VA cell. By applying an overdriving scheme, we experimentally obtained a total response time of 3.3 ms.     

Numerical methods for light propagation in large LC cells: a new approach

Accurate numerical methods for the propagation of light in large 3D samples with strong lateral variation of the director field require prohibitive amounts of time. We consider and compare a standard spectral method and the Finite Difference in Frequency Domain method, showing that the CPU time can be reduced by one or two orders of magnitude using a perturbation approach or a recently developed Reduced Order Method. The equations obtained are applied to liquid crystal cells with in-plane switching, illuminated by a large incoherent source. The developed formalism, based on numerically exact equations, is particularly suitable for treating magnetic or optically active media and for extending to such media the well known approximations based on the 4 × 4 (Berreman) or 2 × 2 (Jones) matrices.