Pearl-inspired polymer films with chiral nematic and multi-lamellar structures

ABSTRACT

Structural coloured materials have been widely found in nature. More and more artificial materials were created based on structural colour. However, fabrication of polymer films with pearly lustre remains a challenging task. Herein, a strategy is reported to prepare broadband reflection polymer films based on the fluorophilic association. A monomer with a perfluorooctyl chain is synthesised. After photo-crosslinking a mixture of a chiral nematic liquid crystal and the fluorinated monomer, broadband reflection film with pearly lustre is obtained. The broadband reflection originates from the broad distribution of the helical pitch. The pearly lustre is caused by the periodically ordered layers formed by the microphase separation between hydrocarbon and fluorocarbon chains. A strategy for the preparation of color liquid crystal polymer film with pearly luster is developed. The Bragg-reflection color originates from the supramolecular helical structure of the cholesteric liquid crystal and the pearly luster originates from the multilayer structure formed by the fluorocarbon/hydrocarbon microphase separation

KEYWORDS:

• Microphase separation
• broadband reflection
• chiral nematic liquid crystal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51673141 and 21875152), the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (20KJA430009), and the Project of Scientific and Technologic Infrastructure of Suzhou (SZS201905).