Single layer retarder with negative dispersion of birefringence and wide field-of-view.

A single layer retarder possessing negative dispersion (ND) of birefringence as well as wide field-of-view (FOV) was long-term objective in optical science. We synthesized new guest reactive monomers with x-shape and mixed them with the host smectic reactive mesogen. The host-guest molecules formed two dimensionally self-organized nanostructure and showed both the ND of birefringence and wide FOV properties. We simulated the antireflection property of a circular polarizer using the optical properties of the retarder. The average reflectance of the retarder was 0.52% which was much smaller than that of the commercial single layer ND retarder 1.83%.