Liquid Crystal Alignment on Solution Derived Zinc Oxide Films via Ion Beam Irradiation.

A 75-nm-thick ZnO film was deposited by a sol-gel method on indium-tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass. This film served as a liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer. We report the fabrication and characteristics of this film after ion-beam (IB) irradiation. Uniform LC alignment was achieved at an IB incident energy above 2400 eV. The IB-treated ZnO surface was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), monitoring the intensity of the Zn 2p and O 1s peaks as a function of IB-irradiation energy density. The electro-optical (EO) characteristics of a twisted nematic-liquid crystal display (TN-LCD) were comparable to rubbed polyimide.

Novel CFTR mutations in a Korean infant with cystic fibrosis and pancreatic insufficiency.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disease that is very rare in Asians: only a few cases have been reported in Korea. We treated a female infant with CF who had steatorrhea and failure to thrive. Her sweat chloride concentration was 102.0 mM/L. Genetic analysis identified two novel mutations including a splice site mutation (c.1766+2T >C) and a frameshift mutation (c.3908dupA; Asn1303LysfsX6). Pancreatic enzyme replacement and fat-soluble vitamin supplementation enabled the patient to get a catch-up growth. This is the first report of a Korean patient with CF demonstrating pancreatic insufficiency. CF should therefore be considered in the differential diagnosis of infants with steatorrhea and failure to thrive.

Enhanced switching behavior of iron oxide nanoparticle-doped liquid-crystal display.

It is well known that doping nanoparticles (NPs) in liquid crystals (LCs) can easily change the physical and electro-optical properties of LC mixture. In this paper, we demonstrate homogeneous, aligned nematic LC (N-LC) system dispersed in iron oxide (Fe2O3) NPs. The prepared Fe2O3 NPs have an average particle size of 50 nm. By changing the doping concentration of Fe2O3 NPs, we observed the characteristics of LC systems. Electrooptical (EO) characteristics included faster rising and falling times (2.14 ms and 10.24 ms, respectively) and lower driving voltage (1.45 V) compared with a pure N-LC cell. We demonstrated these results via the relationship between dielectric con- stant and LC device properties. The results were verified by software simulation based on general physical properties. Moreover, we observed that LC system with Fe2O3 NPs could be accomplished without capacitance hysteresis by capturing charged impurities. Superior performance of LC cell with Fe2O3 NPs indicates that the proposed LC system have strong potential for use in the production of advanced LC displays.