| Blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) materials have potential for advanced applications of display material and technology based on their optical behaviors, such as field-induced birefringence and sub-millisecond response time, which is at least one order of magnitude faster than the present nematic liquid crystal based displays. Since blue phases appear in the narrow temperature range between the chiral nematic and the isotropic phases, there is a temperature range limitation for the application of blue phase liquid crystal.;In this dissertation, we have developed blue phase liquid crystal materials with a wide temperature range and low driving voltage. The first goal was to develop wide-temperature range blue phase liquid crystal materials using several stabilization methods notably polymer stabilization, doping of carbon-nanotubes and bent-core molecules. The temperature range could be expanded more than 54°C via the polymer stabilization. The second goal was to explore the polymer dispersed blue phase liquid crystal combining the advantages of the polymer dispersion method and blue phase materials. Polymer encapsulated blue phase films showed a large Kerr constant, low switching voltage and fast response time. Moreover, the temperature range of encapsulated blue phase films were successfully expanded from 9°C to 54°C . |
