Abstract
A bandwidth-controllable reflective gel has been investigated from photo- and thermally-induced processes. Due to the pitch of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) composite increasing as the temperature rises, the CLC with short pitch is frozen by UV-curing the polymer network at low temperature and the CLC with long pitch is fixed by heat curing the polymer network at high temperature. A non-uniform pitch distribution of CLCs forms in the gel when temperature becomes low. It is demonstrated that the memory effect of the polymer network is an important mechanism for the resulting gel.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Flat-Panel Display Special Project of China 863 Plan (Grant No. 2008AA03A318), National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 50973010), National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 20674005) and Projects of Chinese National Science Tackling Key Problems (Grant No. 2007BAE31B02).