Photo-Aligned Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Devices with Novel Electro-Optic Characteristics
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The submitted review manuscript is devoted to the comprehensive analysis of the activity in the field of the photoalignment of ferroelectric liquid crystals and novel effects there.
The authors did very detailed description in this field and, to my knowledge, this is the only modern review article devoted to this subject.
In my opinion. this nicely written manuscript could be interesting to broad, interdisciplinary audience.
I think that this manuscript could be published as it was submitted without corrections and improvement.
Author Response
Reviewer 1: The submitted review manuscript is devoted to the comprehensive analysis of the activity in the field of the photoalignment of ferroelectric liquid crystals and novel effects there.
The authors did very detailed description in this field and, to my knowledge, this is the only modern review article devoted to this subject.
In my opinion, this nicely written manuscript could be interesting to broad, interdisciplinary audience.
I think that this manuscript could be published as it was submitted without corrections and improvement.
Reply: Thank you very much for so positive review! We have corrected minor language and grammatical errors that we have found after careful reading.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper of Vladimir Chigrinov, Qi Guo and Aleksey Kudreyko entitled “Photo-aligned ferroelectric liquid crystal devices with novel electro-optic characteristics” concerns a review of different applications of photo-aligned ferroelectric liquid crystal. The paper is very interesting, well written and well structured. After a good introduction, the author presents the method of surface alignment of ferroelectric LC (FLC), then they detail successively the polymer stabilization of FLC, the novel applications (smart glasses, Pancharatnam-Berry phase lens, High resolution displays) and the low-level laser therapy devices. This review is a good source of information for researcher who wanting to start an experimental work on this subject and this paper can be published as is in Crystals after replying to my short questions and correcting some little mistapes.
Questions and Remarks:
1) In section 2.1., you mentioned that asymmetric boundary conditions allow the best alignment quality of liquid crystals molecules. Could you explain (with the free energy consideration for example) and detail please? Because it is different than the conditions of alignment of nematic liquid crystal with symmetric layers.
2) Page 5, figure 2 a) : What is the maximum contrast achieved with the increase of exposure time (after the 30 minutes of the experiment) ?
3) Page 5, figure 2 : the thickness of SD-1 is 13 nm : how this value is determined ? Line 163 : how is controled the deposition of the thickness (3-5 nm) ?
4) Page 7 , line 228 : why did you use symmetric coating with SD-1 in this case ? Is it due to the presence of the polymer network ?
5) Page 17, line 571 : please add the definition of the crosstalk (figure 13).
6) Page 20, line 649 : change 5.1 by 4.4.
7) Page 20, line 678 : change 5.1 by 4.4.1
8) Page 22, line 707 : change 1.1.1. by 4.4.2
9) Page 24, line 749 : change 5.1.2. by 4.4.3.
10) Page 23, line 728 : a word is missing : As the LC lens, we ” “a double-layered
Author Response
Reviewer 2: We have tried to answer all your questions, and the text is highlighted in red.
- In section 2.1., you mentioned that asymmetric boundary conditions allow the best alignment quality of liquid crystals molecules. Could you explain (with the free energy consideration for example) and detail please? Because it is different than the conditions of alignment of nematic liquid crystal with symmetric layers.
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. Asymmetric boundary condition is essential to avoid the competition in the alignment of two substrates of the cell. Even slightly mismatch of alignment directions of two substrate may cause deterioration of alignment quality. The corresponding changes were brought in the text (the paragraph above Fig. 1).
- Page 5, figure 2 a) : What is the maximum contrast achieved with the increase of exposure time (after the 30 minutes of the experiment) ?
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The contrast ratio of the cell filled with the FLC-451 superiors 400:1 for texp=30 min and 300:1 for texp=20 min, as shown in Figure 2 (a). The contrast ratio increases with longer exposure time.
- Page 5, figure 2 : the thickness of SD-1 is 13 nm : how this value is determined ? Line 163 : how is controlled the deposition of the thickness (3-5 nm) ?
Reply: Thank you for the question. The thickness of the SD1 alignment layer is determined by the rotation speed and concentration of SD solution during spincoating fabrication process. The corresponding changes were brought in the text (the paragraph above Fig. 2).
- Page 7 , line 228 : why did you use symmetric coating with SD-1 in this case ? Is it due to the presence of the polymer network ?
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The asymmetric alignment configuration is supposed to improve the alignment quality for polymer stabilized ESHFLC. However, the alignment optimization has not been done yet.
- Page 17, line 571 : please add the definition of the crosstalk (figure 13).
Reply: Added (see caption of Fig. 13)
- Page 20, line 649 : change 5.1 by 4.4.
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
- Page 20, line 678 : change 5.1 by 4.4.1
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
- Page 22, line 707 : change 1.1.1. by 4.4.2
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
- Page 24, line 749 : change 5.1.2. by 4.4.3.
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
- Page 23, line 728 : a word is missing : As the LC lens, we ” “a double-layered
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Attached
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Reviewer 3:
Thank you for taking time to share your feedback! We have corrected your remarks. Regarding different fonts in pictures, the total work of this Review was carried out by using different software, and fonts styles can differ because of this reason. It can be fixed at the editorial level. All typos have been corrected.
- There are two general remarks. Throughout the text the word “phase” has two meanings – the thermodynamical phase and the phase of an electromagnetic wave. Please, read carefully the paper and rephrase where necessary – especially in parts where the Berry phase is discussed.
Reply: We have specified the difference between identical words with different meanings as “optical phase”, where the phase of an electromagnetic wave is discussed.
- The second general one is that fonts in pictures vary from one to another which is sometimes disturbing. But this is probably fixed at the editorial level.
Reply: Thanks for the Reviewer’s comments. The errors have been corrected in the revised manuscript.
- Line 183 anisotropy of free energy... what does it mean? Anisotropic is a material or a structure... probably it is meant that the free energy depends on orientation of azodyes? Just rearticulate the wording.
Reply: Corrected.
- Line 524 Balance between the elastic energy and the anchoring energy .... energy cannot be balanced, balanced could be interactions... do I understand correctly that the contributions of the competing elastic and anchoring interactions in the free energy were minimized by the arrangement of molecules or something similar? Please, rephrase.
Reply: Corrected as “…balance between the competing anchoring and elastic interactions of the helical FLC.”.
- Line 543 for one polarities of E... it might be a typo only, but it results in an unclear sentence, please check.
- Line 570 ... not linear but elliptical ... probably meant linearly/elliptically polarized?
- Line 588 .. balance of energy ... please rephrase
- Line 606 ... The color filter less display offers... filterless?
- Lin 728 ... As the LC lens, we a doubled-layered .... a typo?
Reply: Typos 5-9 have been corrected.
Thank you again for your kind comments and valuable time.
