Polymer dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) have kindled a spark of interest because of their unique characteristic of electrically controlled switching. However, some issues including high operating voltage, low contrast ratio and poor mechanical properties are hindering their practical applications. To overcome these drawbacks, some measures were taken such as molecular structure optimization of the monomers and liquid crystals, modification of PDLC and doping of nanoparticles and dyes. This review aims at detailing the recent advances in the process, preparations and applications of PDLCs over the past six years.

With the increasing demand for energy, how to store and release energy efficiently and stably has become an urgent research topic. Polymer dielectrics have become a kind of ideal dielectric materials in electrostatic capacitors for energy storage due to their advantages of light weight, easy fabrication, low cost, and high breakdown strength. It has a wide application prospect in smart power grids, new energy vehicles, pulse power weapons, electromagnetic guns, and lasers. However, existing polymer dielectrics cannot simultaneously possess the characteristics of high energy density, high breakdown field intensity, high charge and discharge efficiency, and low dielectric loss, thus limiting the development of compact, efficient, and reliable electronic power technology. In addition, the inherent thermal/field charge injection, excitation, and transport phenomena of polymer dielectrics make the resistivity and dielectric energy storage properties of polymer dielectrics decrease sharply under the combined action of high temperature and high electric field. In order to optimize the energy storage performance of polymer dielectrics (including room temperature and high temperature dielectrics), it has been obtained excellent dielectric breakdown strength, energy storage density, energy storage charge, and discharge efficiency from polymer nanocomposites, polymer/small molecule composites, polymer/polymer blends, new synthetic polymers, multilayer polymers, and other material systems. Based on these material systems, this review summarizes and compares these material systems, points out their advantages and disadvantages including the key problems, and puts forward suggestions for the future research.

This review summarizes the main types, processing methods, and applications of optical diffusers in LCDs, LED lighting, OLEDs, and solar cells. The tunable ones accelerate their applications in flexible opto-electronic, holographic, or 3D displays.

Polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films were prepared by the ultraviolet-light-induced polymerization of photopolymerizable monomers in nematic liquid crystal/chiral dopant/thiol-acrylate reaction monomer composites. The effects of the chiral dopant and crosslinking agents on the electro-optical properties of the PDLC films were systematically investigate. While added the chiral dopant S811 into the PDLC films, the initial off-state transmittance of the films was decreased. It was found that the weight ratio among acrylate monomers, thiol monomer PETMP and the polymercaptan Capcure 3-800 showed great influence on the properties of the fabricated PDLC films because of the existence of competition between thiol-acrylate reaction and acrylate monomer polymerization reaction. While adding polymercaptans curing agent Capcure 3-800 with appropriate concentration into the PDLC system, lower driven voltage and higher contrast ratio were achieved. This made the polymer network and electro-optical properties of the PDLC films easily tunable by the introduction of the thiol monomers.

As we move from the industrial age to the information age, nowadays, the opportunity to access personal information in public increases as personal computers (PCs), cell phones, automated teller machines (ATM) and other portable display devices have come into wider use, so it is well suited for these liquid crystal displays (LCDs) to switch between wide viewing angle (WVA) (share mode) and narrow viewing angle (NVA) (privacy mode). In this review, we have summarized structures, principles and characteristics of several devices that show great potential application in controllable anti-peeping displays in the eyesight of materials consist of pure liquid crystals (LCs), polymer dispersed LCs (PDLCs), polymer stabilized LCs (PSLCs) or polymer network LCs (PNLCs) and non-LCs, which provides systematic information for next-generation viewing angle-controllable LCDs with lower operating voltage, higher transmittance and good viewing angle controllable characteristics. Because LCs/polymer composite films have the advantages of long life, low power consumption and energy saving, they are regarded as the mainstream technology of next-generation viewing angle controllable displays.