Liquid Crystal Sensors with Capacitive Transduction

In this paper, the theory for tracking the average molecular orientation of a liquid crystal material via capacitive sensing of anisotropic media is presented. Tracking the director axis of a nematic liquid crystal material can be achieved by two capacitance measurements. The sensitivity for the sensor at different alignments is studied. Both the experimental and calculated values for fringing capacitances of a selected interdigitated fingers sensor are presented.