Color selectivity lent to a cholesteric liquid crystal by monitoring interface-induced deformations†
Abstract
The cholesteric liquid crystalline structure is omnipresent in living matter and concerns many applications in optics because of its property of selective light reflection. The color reflected by this structure depends on material parameters such as the molecular chirality or the concentration of chiral dopant, the helical pitch of the twisted structure and the optical indices. In the present publication, we show that the color may be selected simply by varying the annealing time of a cholesteric oligomer film with hybrid anchoring. Experimental and simulated transmittance spectra reveal the color shift. The three-dimensional representation of the structure is provided from the macroscopic scale to the mesoscale by combining complementary imaging techniques (