Colourful cholesteric liquid crystal polymer network gratings prepared through nanoimprinting

ABSTRACT

Both the colourful cholesteric liquid crystal polymer network (CLCN) patterns and the gratings have attracted much attention for their applications as optical materials. Herein, the photochromic cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) mixtures were prepared using a photoisomerizable chiral dopant. The structural colour of the CLC mixtures was tunable by changing the chiral dopant concentration and the intensity of the 365-nm irradiation light. The CLCN gratings with a structural colour were prepared using the UV nanoimprinting lithography method. The structural colours of the CLCN gratings originate from both the cholesteric and the grating structures. Moreover, a patterned CLCN grating was prepared using a photochromic CLC mixture, which could be applied for decoration and anti-counterfeiting.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Cholesteric liquid crystal network
• UV nanoimprinting lithography
• grating
• colourful pattern
• photochroism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02678292.2024.2302449.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 52273212], the Project of Scientific and Technologic Infrastructure of Suzhou [No. SZS201905], the Key Laboratory of Polymeric Materials Design and Synthesis for Biomedical Function and the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Design and Application.