Study on the morphologies and electro-optical properties of cyano-phenyl-ester liquid crystals/polymer composite films prepared by a stepwise polymerisation

ABSTRACT

In this work, a series of liquid crystal molecules containing cyano-phenyl-ester was designed and synthesised. Subsequently, a novel cyano-phenyl-ester liquid crystals (CPE-LCs) with a wide temperature range from −30°C to 96.4°C were developed by mixturing these liquid crystal compositions. Then as the host materials, the CPE-LCs were used for preparing polymer-dispersed and polymer-stabilised cholesteric liquid crystals (PD&SCLC) composite films by a stepwise polymerisation. The morphologies and electro-optical properties of the as-made composite films were systematically investigated through varying the acrylate liquid crystalline polymerisable monomers content, chiral doping R1011 content, applied electric field intensity and polymerisation time. Indeed, the formation of homeotropically aligned anisotropic polymer networks (HAAPNs) enabled to reduce the driving voltage of PD&SCLC from 86.6 V to 22.2 V with a reasonable contrast ratio. This work provides a new method to optimise PD&SCLC composite films in terms of the host liquid crystals.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Cyano-phenyl-ester liquid crystals
• polymer-dispersed and polymer-stabilised cholesteric liquid crystals
• stepwise polymerisation
• network morphologies
• electro-optical properties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council, the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 51773017], the State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials [Grant No. 2018Z-06], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant No. FRF-DF-19-001] and the Joint Fund of the Ministry of Education for Equipment Pre-Research [Grant No. 6141A02033238].