Study on electro-optical and adhesion properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal films from thiol-ene click reaction

In this work, polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films, with good electro-optical and adhesion properties, were obtained by phase separation induced through thiol-ene click chemistry. The effects of liquid crystal content, thiol content and thiol functionality on the electro-optical and adhesion properties of the PDLC films were systematically investigated. It is found that adding an appropriate proportion of high-molecular-weight polymer thiol, Capcure 3–800 as the curing agent can effectively decrease the saturation voltage of the PDLC films. And when the content of Capcure 3–800 is 5.5 wt.%, the PDLC films can show the optimised electro-optical performance. Moreover, the adhesion properties between the two pieces of substrates and the PDLC films are related to the density of the polymer network.