Enhanced Low-temperature Electro-optical Kerr Effect of Stable Cubic Soft Superstructure Enabled by Fluorinated Polymer Stabilization

An enhanced electro-optical Kerr effect of the stable self-organized cubic blue phase liquid crystal superstructure at a relatively low temperature down to −50 °C was achieved through a judiciously designed fluorinated polymer stabilization. The fluorinated sample exhibited not only a rather stable cubic structure, but the promoted electro-optical performances of low driving voltage, weak hysteresis and high contrast ratio at such a low-temperature, which were much distinct from the common non-fluorinated polymer stabilized blue phase liquid crystal without conspicuous low-temperature Kerr response behaviours. Kerr constant, which reflects the obviousness of Kerr effect, of the fluorinated sample at −50 °C indicated a spectacular enhancement of two orders of magnitude in contrast to the commonly material, thereby corroborating the high efficiency of polymer fluorination in enhancing low-temperature Kerr effect. Such an enhancement of Kerr effect was probably resulted from the decreasing of interfacial anchoring between liquid crystal and fluorinated polymer network. The fluorinated polymer stabilization not only ensures the stability of self-organized cubic structure of blue phase, but overcomes the challenge and bottleneck problem of low-temperature inapplicability of common blue phase liquid crystal and paves a brilliant and broad way for relevant materials to abundant perspective applications at low temperature.