Preparation of soild cholesteric films from biomaterials and usage of their optical performances

在本研究中，我们以生物材料、多肽、纤维素和甲壳素为原料制备了胆甾型液晶。已经实现了这些生物材料只能形成溶致液晶，但我们目前的研究表明，如果在侧链上进行化学修饰，它们也可以形成热致胆甾型液晶。热致液晶可以很容易地通过猝灭胆甾相液晶来制备具有大螺旋结构的胆甾相玻璃。在这些薄膜中，很容易制备出螺旋轴垂直于薄膜表面、螺距从200 nm到无限大不同的均匀胆甾相结构。这些微细胆甾相固体的光学性质得到了广泛的研究，并被认为是特殊的光学滤光片、光学补偿器等。

In this study, we have prepare the cholesteric liquid crystals based on the biomaterials, polypeptide, cellulose and chitin. It has been reallized that these biomaterials can form only the lyotropic liquid crystals, but our present study indicates that they can also form the thermotropic cholesteric liquid crystals if they are modified chemically on the side chains. Thermotropic liquid crystals are very convenient to prepare the cholesteric glasses with the macro-helical structure, since they can be easily prepared by quenching the cholesteric liquid crystals. In these films, the uniform cholesteric domain structures with the helical axis lying perpendicular to the film surface and with different helical pitches from 200 nm to the infinite were easily prepared. The optical properties of these fine cholesteric solids were widely studied and their application was considered as specific optical filter, optical compensator, and etc.