Physical Unclonable Functions Employing Circularly Polarized Light Emission from Nematic Liquid Crystal Ordering Directed by Helical Nanofilaments

Jun Sung Park, Jae Jin Lee, Yong Jun Choi, Tae Woong Moon, Seunghyun Kim, Seungwoo Cho, Haeun Kang, Dong Ha Kim, Jongwook Park, Suk Won Choi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study proposes the use of physical unclonable functions employing circularly polarized light emission (CPLE) from nematic liquid crystal (NLC) ordering directed by helical nanofilaments in a mixed system composed of a calamitic NLC mixture and a bent-core molecule. To achieve this, an intrinsically nonemissive NLC is blended with a high concentration of a luminescent rod-like dye, which is miscible up to 10 wt % in the calamitic NLC without a significant decrease in the degree of alignment. The luminescence dissymmetry factor of CPLEs in the mixed system strongly depends on the degree of alignment of the dye-doped NLCs. Furthermore, the mixed system prepared in this study exhibits two randomly generated chiral domains with CPLEs of opposite signs. These chiral domains are characterized not only by their CPLE performances but also by their ability to generate random patterns up to several millimeters, making them promising candidates for high-performance secure authentication applications.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7875-7882
Number of pages8
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume16
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 14 Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 American Chemical Society

Keywords

  • chirality
  • circularly polarized light emission
  • helical nanofilaments
  • liquid crystals
  • physical unclonable functions

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