Observation of anisotropically reflected colors in chiral monomer-doped cholesteric liquid crystals

Observations of the anisotropically reflected colors from a film that is based on chiral monomer-doped cholesteric liquid crystals (CM-CLCs) are made. The key to obtaining such anisotropically reflected colors is the produced multidomain planar-CLCs structures, which can simultaneously reflect and scatter the incident light. UV polymerization of the CMs from one side of the cell results in an inhomogeneous distribution of pitch lengths across the cell, which is responsible for the anisotropically reflected colors from the two surfaces of the sample. Furthermore, the reflectivity and the bandwidth of the reflection spectrum depend on the cell gap.