Temperature Stages Prove a Hit with Liquid Crystal Development and Characterisation Specialists

Market leaders in temperature controlled microscopy, Linkam Scientific Instruments, teams up to supply stages to LC-Vision, suppliers of state-of-the-art turnkey systems for high throughput automated liquid crystal analysis.

Based in Boulder, Colorado, LC Vision is a company working in the field of liquid crystal research and development where they focus on two types: nematic and ferroelectric liquid crystals (LCs). LC Vision has also developed automated liquid crystal analysis equipmen,t which measures primary properties such as viscosity, as well as the dielectric and elastic constants.

Understanding the thermal and optical properties allows manufacturers to design better-looking liquid crystal displays. It is important to know how the LC material behaves with respect to temperature. For instance, what

happens to the switching speed of a LC phase when the temperature goes from room temperature (23°C) to the operation temperature of a projection display (~50°C)? This directly affects the colour bit depth, which is important to achieve the best image possible.

Founder and CEO of LC-Vision, Dr Michael Wand, evaluated temperature stages from a number of suppliers before settling on Linkam for his work and incorporating them into the company’s liquid crystal analysis systems (LCAS): "I chose Linkam for very basic but vital reasons. It is easy to use, accurate, and dependable. Support from Linkam’s team is exceptional enabling us to have written a software interface that allows us to operate the LTS350 from within the LCAS software which makes it an even easier system to use for our users."