Review of blue phase liquid crystal devices

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the literature that deals with Blue phase liquid crystal and focus on the recent progress in developing high performance applications. Blue phase liquid crystal show unique property of selective reflection of incident light and has potential to be used in fast light modulators or tunable photonic crystals. An extensive research is going on these materials to make them suitable for commercial displays and photonic technology. The presents work is an attempt to review the research carried out on Blue Phase Liquid Crystal materials and Devices. Starting from the brief history of Blue Phase Liquid Crystals, it mainly focuses on the recent advancement in development of highly efficient Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Devices for practical applications. The problems encountered in commercialization of Blue Phase Devices and the ways to overcome the issues is outlined. These Blue Phase Liquid Crystals are observed to show enhancement in their properties like high efficiency, wide viewing angle and excellent dark state without any damage to films, low operating voltage, high contrast ratio, high transmittance when doped with materials like polymers and nanoparticles and discussed in details. These promising results indicate that the Blue Phase Liquid Crystals materials with doping will play a vital role in development of devices for future applications.