Polarizing Properties of Functional Optical Films Based on Lyotropic Chromonic Liquid Crystals

We report results of the optical characterization of dried thin films obtained from the well-aligned nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC) by two different deposition techniques. The first one, the electrostatic layer-by-layer deposition technique, was used to prepare aligned LCLC films of a nanometer thickness in the form of a monomolecular layer and multi-layered stack. The second technique is the direct deposition technique. The films' optical characteristics such as dispersion of the light absorption indices, birefringence, polarizing efficiency, contrast ratio, transmittance of unpolarized light, were measured and compared with the correspondent characteristics of a cell filled with nematic solution of the same LCLC material.