A new-type composite film of cholesteric liquid crystal doped with PCBM for laser-damage prevention in both visible and near-infrared region

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, with the increasing use of high-power laser, research and development of laser-damage prevention materials with multifunctional features and wideband wavelengths are urgent and indispensable. In the paper, cholestric liquid crystal (ChLC) is first proposed to be doped with a high-efficiency optical limiting material, 6, 6-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), to fabricate a new-type laser-damage-prevention film. The ChLCs have the desired reflection wavelengths covering 750–2300 nm, which is an effective and potential candidate for the prevention of continuous or tuneable laser in near infrared (NIR) region. Meanwhile, the solubility of PCBM in LC and its nonlinear absorption property of are discussed, and it was proved that the good solubility of PCBM in LC contributed to the excellent nonlinear absorption of mixture (LC doped with PCBM). Taking advantages of this phenomenon, a novel composite film of ChLCs doped with PCBM is prepared by UV polymerization. As a result, the composite film not only performs broadband reflection in NIR region, but also exhibits a strong nonlinear absorption and excellent optical limiter properties in visible region, which proves the film's potential application in laser damage prevention.

KEYWORDS:

• Cholesteric liquid crystal
• composite film
• laser-damage prevention

Authors' contributions

Zhendong Wang conceived and designed the experiments; Min Zhu, Huaping Ren, Qiang Ma, and Zhun Guo performed the experiments; Yuzhen Zhao and Shaopeng Tian analyzed the data; Kexuan Li, Siyi Ding, and Zongcheng Miao contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools; Yuzhen Zhao wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51673157), Special fund for high-level talents of Xijing University (Grant No. XJ16T05).