Theoretical and experimental studies of hyperreflective polymer-network cholesteric liquid crystal structures with helicity inversion

Single-layer cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit a reflection coefficient which is at most 50% for unpolarized incident light. We give theoretical and experimental evidence of single-layer polymer-stabilized cholesteric liquid-crystalline structures that demonstrate hyper-reflective properties. Such original features are derived by the concurrent and randomly interlaced presence of both helicities. The fundamental properties of such structures are revealed by detailed numerical simulations based on a stochastic approach. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.