Polymer-stabilized supercooled blue phase

We report a method to prepare a polymer-stabilized liquid-crystal blue phase that is effective over a wide range of temperature. There are two main key points about this method: (1) A precursor solution is injected into the cell at an enough high temperature above the blue phase-isotropic phase transition point, and (2) a photo-polymerization process with a deeply supercooled blue phase of the precursor solution stabilizes the phase. Thus, a polymer-stabilized supercooled blue phase is achieved through photo-polymerization over a wide range of temperature. The proposed method will be very beneficial for manufacturing blue-phase-mode liquid crystal displays. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4752461]