Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) are a class of materials that self-assemble into a helical superstructure exhibiting a circularly polarized selective reflection. The formation of the helical structure is induced through a chirality transfer from a chiral small molecule dopant that is added to the liquid crystalline matrix. Furthermore, CLCs can be polymer stabilized through the addition and photopolymerization of liquid crystal monomers to form polymer stabilized CLCs (PSCLCs). Many chiral dopants and liquid crystal monomers are derived from petroleum byproducts that are synthetically modified using a variety of chiral technologies, including separations, salt resolutions, and asymmetric syntheses.<br/>A potential route to obtain alternative chiral dopants and monomers to commercially available materials is through natural biomolecules that have inherent chirality. A series of biomolecules including sesquiterpenes, triterpenoids, steroids, and isosobide were screened as chiral dopants and the performance was compared to synthetically produced chiral dopants. Several biodopants were synthetically modified to generate biomonomers and to increase the helical twist power, phase stability, and miscibility with liquid crystal hosts to improve performance as chiral dopants. Various PSCLCs mixtures were formulated using the modified biomolecules to exhibit dynamic electro-optical responses including bandwidth broadening, red or blue tuning, and switching of the selective reflection notch when an electric stimuli was applied.

Electro-optic response of polymer stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals containing biomolecule-based chiral dopants and monomers

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