Pseudo-dielectric relaxation-enabled electrothermal tuning of reflective color in a soft chiral photonic crystal

Abstract

Many published papers bear flaw information caused by misinterpreting the pseudo-dielectric relaxation in liquid crystal (LC) confined in thin cells. The pseudo-dielectric relaxation stems from the cell geometries or parameters, which should not be misrecognized as an inherent material property of the LC. In this work, we explored the pseudo-dielectric relaxation and demonstrated an unconventional tuning means to electrically manipulate the reflective color of a typical cholesteric LC cell based on the heating due to the pseudo-dielectric relaxation. A tuning range in the full-color spectrum can be easily achieved by a limited temperature change of merely a few degrees Celsius.