Supramolecular liquid-crystal gels formed by polyfluorene-based π-conjugated polymer for switchable anisotropic...

To overcome the problem of high driving voltage and low contrast ratio in the switchable scattering device of conventional liquid-crystal (LC) physical gel, a new type of supramolecular LC physical gel has been developed and fabricated through the fibrous self-assembly of the polyfluorene-based π-conjugated polymer, poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) (F8BT), in nematic LC mixture E7. It was found that the rubbed interface between the LC molecules and polyimide layer can induce the LC physical gels to demonstrate fantastic light scattering characteristic. The gels with oriented self-assembled supramolecular structures exhibiting significant anisotropic light scattering in the main-chain direction of the F8BT molecules under an extremely low driving voltage (ca. 2.7 V) are reported for the first time. In addition, the contrast ratio can be reached exceeding 1000. In contrast to conventional LC physical gels, the large reduction of driving voltages of the supramolecular gel provides great possibility for application in various electro-optical devices such as tunable polarizers, transflective displays, and polarized light modulators.