Chinese Optics Letters, Volume. 23, Issue 9, (2025)
Low energy consumption and fast electro-optic switching in polymer confined ferroelectric nematics [Early Posting]
Polymer-embedded liquid crystals (LCs) play a pivotal role in smart applications by enabling precise tunability over electro-optical properties, such as transparency and scattering, making them ideal for advanced technologies like smart windows, adaptive displays, and light modulation systems. However, conventional LC-polymeric systems exhibit high driving voltages and elevated energy consumption, limiting their efficiency in sustainable technologies, necessitating advancements in voltage reduction, high mechanical and electro-optical performances to harness their full potential for energy saving and environment protection devices. Here, we demonstrate a polymer-confined ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystal system, developed by mixing with both mesogenic and non-mesogenic monomers and photo-polymerized under an applied electric field. The prepared sample overcomes the existing limitations through making effective multidomain polymer network structure and leveraging intriguing properties of NF LCs such as ultra-high dielectric constant, polarization and high-speed switching speed. This innovative architecture allows for the controlled reorientation of non-uniform directors across domains under an electric field, resulting in a highly transparent state. Simultaneously, the unique molecular alignment in the NF phase generates a highly scattered state compared to the paraelectric nematic phase, achieving an outstanding contrast ratio. Results exhibit the advantages of a low driving voltage, sub-millisecond switching time with negligible hysteresis and improved durability, which promotes an application in energy-saving smart windows. Additionally, this work reveals valuable insights into leveraging NF LCs and controlling polymer network structures to advance the performance of electro-optic devices.