Hysteresis of Polymer Stabilized Blue Phase Liquid Crystals

Abstract

We demonstrate a hysteresis-free polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystals (PSBP-LCs) as well as hysteresis-free dye-doped polymer stabilized blue phase liquid crystals (DDPSBP-LCs) by means of enlarging the domain size and improving the uniformity of the crystal orientations of PSBP-LC and DDPSBP-LC. The mechanism based on the crystal growth is proposed. The hysteresis-free PSBP-LC (or DDPSBP-LC) is important in PSBP-LC-based photonic devices, such as displays, electro-optical switches, and electrically tunable focusing LC lenses.