Mechanical Robust Liquid Crystal Microcapsules for Vibrant Color Display

Microencapsulation technology can effectively improve the performance of liquid crystals (LCs) by addressing the serious limitations in stability and versatility caused by their liquidity. However, it cannot achieve a combination of optical and mechanical properties, let alone thermal stability. Instead of building self-assembly structures in shells that deoptimize LC molecular structures, we propose a novel strategy to introduce polymer-stabilized LC systems, which confer multiple supporting structures to microcapsules. Upon irradiation with UV light, synergistic interactions are produced between photo-cross-linked LC monomers and photoinert cholesteric LCs, providing a three-dimensionally restricted network surrounding the microcapsules, thereby yielding polymer-stabilized cholesteric LC microcapsules (PSCLCMs). The formed rigid network increases the thermal stability of the microcapsules and extends their storage period to 9 months. Then, a colorless coating is produced by mixing RGB tricolor PSCLCMs as a projection screen, exhibiting superior vibrant color relative to commercial products, with a gain of 1.3-1.4 and better ambient light immunity. Furthermore, plasticized PSCLCM coatings exhibit significant dynamic tensile discoloration properties. The thermally stable and mechanically robust PSCLCMs may serve as a reference for display, security, and sensing toward advanced applications.