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Outline
Takezoe-Ishikawa Lab works on organic functional materials from physics viewpoints.
We are particularly interested in liquid crystals. Liquid crystals are a mesophase emerging between liquid and crystalline phases and have fluidity of liquid and anisotropy of crystal. Because of a novel “liquid crystalline state” which may not appear in usual materials, interesting physics emerges and associated many applications are expected. There exist many liquid crystal phases. Further new liquid crystal phases are discovered still now. We discovered the antiferroelectric liquid crystal phase and its subphases (1989), banana-shaped liquid crystal phases (1996). These liquid crystals established major fields in liquid crystal science.
It is still possible to discover novel liquid crystal phases by introducing new types of interactions and mixing different types of liquid crystals. Our objective is to find such new phases and the associated new physics from scientific viewpoint. We are expecting new attractive applications emerging from such new physics. Actually antiferroelectric liquid crystals mentioned above have been investigated for fast display application. We are pursuing research of banana-shaped liquid crystal aiming fast display devices.
We are also pursuing non-display applications. Particularly we have proposed photonic devices using cholesteric liquid crystals such as dye lasers, optical diode (optical isolator), special mirror plates, polarization control devices. Final target is cw lasing of liquid crystal dye lasers for the first time in organic systems. It is known that liquid crystals have large mobility for electron and hole carriers. We are trying to apply liquid crystals for electronic devices.
There are lots of organic materials having electronic and optic functions. We are studying organic transistors and organic light emitting diode (OLED) using thin films of small molecules and polymers.