Unique Optical Properties upon Uniaxial Stretch Process of Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Films from Crosslinkable Cellulose Derivatives

Abstract

We successfully fabricated the cholesteric liquid crystalline elastomer (CLCE) films of crosslinkable cellulose derivatives with visible Bragg reflection. Very recently, we have developed the flexible CLCE films with capabilities to reversibly control the reflection colors by not only compression, but also stretch process. In this presentation, we report on unique optical properties of the CLCE films upon uniaxial stretch process. Although our CLCE films selectively reflected the circularly polarized light with right-handedness at the initial state, the uniaxially stretched CLCE films showed the unique reflection characteristics of circularly polarized light with both right- and left-handedness.