Reactive mesogens for ultraviolet-transparent liquid crystal polymer networks

ABSTRACT

Transparency and stability to UV light are important and desirable properties for modern tunable optical elements and active soft robots. A library of novel reactive mesogens for liquid crystal polymer networks resilient and transparent to UV light has been synthetised and characterised. Phase behaviours of the reactive mesogens have been determined by polarised optical microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. Liquid crystal polymer networks based on the combination of these novel reactive mesogens have been evaluated and compared to those based on common commercially available compounds. The results showed a twofold increase in transparency in a broad UV spectral region (200–400 nm) and importantly showed no degradation upon prolonged UV exposure contrary to the networks composed from commercial counterparts.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Liquid crystals
• reactive mesogens
• liquid crystal polymer networks
• UV transparent
• liquid crystal elastomers

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Nathalie Katsonis for useful discussions. The authors acknowledge the ERC (Consolidator Grant, Morpheus, 772564) and the Volkswagen Foundation (Integration of Molecular Components in Functional Macroscopic Systems, 93424) for funding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest has been reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 European Research Council [Consolidator Grant, Morpheus, 772564]; Volkswagen Foundation [Integration of Molecular Components in Functional “Macroscopic Systems, 93424” is missing after Functional].