Research progress of cholesteric liquid crystals with broadband reflection characteristics in application of intelligent optical modulation materials

Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have recently sparked an enormous amount of interest in the development of soft matter materials due to their unique ability to self-organize into a helical supra-molecular architecture and their excellent selective reflection of light based on the Bragg relationship. Nowadays, by the virtue of building the self-organized nanostructures with pitch gradient or non-uniform pitch distribution, extensive work has already been performed to obtain CLC films with a broad reflection band. Based on authors' many years' research experience, this critical review systematically summarizes the physical and optical background of the CLCs with broadband reflection characteristics, methods to obtain broadband reflection of CLCs, as well as the application in the field of intelligent optical modulation materials. Combined with the research status and the advantages in the field, the important basic and applied scientific problems in the research direction are also introduced.