Directing Dynamic Control of Red, Green, and Blue Reflection Enabled by a Light-Driven Self-Organized Helical Superstructure

摘要

Color abounds in nature. Often, color is based on structure rather than pigments,observed in the elegant colors of butterfly wings, bird feathers, and beetle exoskeletons Recent examinations of iridescent beetles correlate their brilliant color patterns to a structure reminiscent of the cholesteric liquid crystal (LC) phase. As a subset of structural color, the helical superstructure of cholesteric LC exhibits vibrant colors by selectively reflecting circularly polarized light according to Bragg's law. For cholesteric LCs, Bragg's law is simply A = np, where A is the reflection wavelength, n is the average index of LC material, and p is the pitch length of the helical superstructure.