Investigations of polarization profiles in sandwich cells containing a liquid crystalline polymer by using the heat wave method (LIMM)

The laser intensity modulation method (LIMM) was applied to the investigation of polarization distributions in sandwich cells of a side chain liquid crystalline polymer (LCP). The thermal poling procedure using a pulsating electric field was carried out for the nematic phase at 80°C. After cooling down the samples to room temperature T_R (i.e. below the glass transition temperature, T_g) a rather perfect alignment of the side chains could be obtained. Our first LIMM investigations at T_R show a nearly homogeneous polarization profile in the LCP layer.