Color changing and lasing stretchable cholesteric films.

Polymer materials able to change reflective properties due to mechanical deformation fundamentally challenge the theory of soft materials and are important for a number of emerging applications. The most promising of those are chiral lasers. In this communication, we report novel cholesteric materials that display large color change from far red to blue and a shift of the position of the selective reflection band under uniaxial strain from near infrared to ultraviolet.

Light controllable tuning and switching of lasing in chiral liquid crystals.

A new approach based on the use of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) and dye-doped light-sensitive chiral dopants was employed to create lasing materials with reversible tuning and switching. The lasing wavelength of optically-pumped dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) is shifted by irradiation with UV light. The shift depends on the UV light exposure.