Photoresponsive cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have attracted a great deal of attention due to their unique self-organized helical arrangement of mesogens that respond to light. The helical superstructures of CLCs are characterized by both handedness and helical pitch P. Handedness describes the direction in which the molecular orientation (director) rotates along the helical axis and P is defined as the distance over which the director rotates by a full 360o. The most important property of CLC is the selective reflection of circularly polarized light (CPL), i.e. when unpolarized light propagates through the CLC medium, only the CPL with the same handedness as the helix is reflected. The light-induced pitch change and resulting reflection wavelength tuning of CLCs have found widespread applications in color filters and reflectors, tunable lasers, and photodisplays that require no driving electronics and can be flexible. In addition, controlling the chirality of CLCs with helix inversion in response to light would hold great potential in the development of stimuli-responsive materials for technological applications, especially the areas in which CPL is involved. In this talk, we will present our recetnt progress on photodynamic chiral molecular switches with thermal stability: from reflection wavelength tuning to handedness inversion of self-organized helical superstructures.1Supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-09-1-0193)

Photodynamic chiral molecular switches with thermal stability: From reflection wavelength tuning to handedness inversion of self-organized helical superstructures<sup>
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248th National Meeting (2014)

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