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Updated: Mar 3, 2026
High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
Published on: October 31, 2019
Tunable reflectance of an inverse opal-chiral nematic liquid crystal multilayer device by electric- or
Yuxian Zhang1, Weidong Zhao, Jiahui Wen
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 100083, China. yangz@ustb.edu.cn wangdong@ustb.edu.cn.
Abstract:
A new type of electric- or thermal-responsive multilayer device composed of SiO2 bilayer inverse opal (IOP) and chiral nematic liquid crystals (N*LCs) was developed. Bilayer IOP was fabricated by layer-by-layer assembly of polystyrene (PS) spheres with two different sizes and showed a reflectance in an extended range of the near-infrared region. Furthermore, the electrically or thermally tunable reflectance of the bilayer-IOP-N*LC device was investigated. The device exhibited the photonic bandgap (PBG) of the N*LC-IOP composite structure with the application of an electric field (voltage-on), while it presented the reflectance of N*LCs without an electric field (voltage-off) and the electrically-responsive behaviour could be reversibly switched. Besides, the device exhibited a gradient redshift of reflectance as temperature increased below the clearing point (TC) while it showed the PBG of the N*LC-IOP composite structure when the temperature was above TC.
