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Updated: Sep 27, 2025
Preparation of Liquid Crystal Networks for Macroscopic Oscillatory Motion Induced by Light
Published on: September 20, 2017
Freestanding Helical Nanostructured Chiro-Photonic Crystal Film and Anticounterfeiting Label Enabled by a
Jinying Bao1,2, Zizheng Wang1,2, Chen Shen1,2
1School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Design and fabrication of freestanding chiro-photonic crystal film with the ability to change color over the whole visible light spectrum is appealing for anticounterfeiting technology and smart labels. Utilizing a newly synthesized light-responsive molecular motor functionalized with cholesterol (chol-MM) on the rotor, novel light-controlled photonic crystal is prepared by doping the novel chol-MM into liquid crystals (LCs). Thanks to the liquid crystalline cholesterol substituent, the chol-MM can be triggered by visible light (420 nm). At the same time, the miscibility of chol-MM in LC matrix is significantly enhanced. Integrating the chol-MM with thermochromic hydrogen-bonded LC matrix, thermal and light dual-responsive cholesteric LC (CLC) material is prepared, in which the nanoscale helical pitch is tunable by photo-induced molecular motions of chol-MM. More importantly, utilizing UV-initiated polymerization of the visible light-modulated CLC material, structural colored photonic crystal films with arbitrary colorful patterns are fabricated. Such freestanding helical nanostructured labels have potential in the application of encrypted communication and anticounterfeiting.
