Transparent Multicolor Electrochromic Displays with Ingenious Hues Adjustment by Integrating Cholesteric Liquid Crystal with Viologen Gel

Abstract

AbstractThe colorization of electrochromic displays (ECDs) has become an intriguing hotspot with fast‐growing demands for the development of displays. Reported colorful inorganic ECDs incorporating optical nanocavity or metal‐dielectric stacks sacrifice transparency and have intrinsic structural color, thus confining plenty of applications as transparent displays. Additionally, most transparent ECDs adopt plane alignments of EC materials that can only show one or several kinds of colors under electrical stimuli. Herein, vertically stacked viologen‐based ECDs integrating cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) are proposed. By applying voltage, rotation, and changing chiral dopants’ concentration, the combined ECDs show enlarged color palette and multi‐mode color modulation. Moreover, red, blue, and green viologen gels are also synthesized by producing dioctyl‐, diethyl‐, and diphenyl‐substituted dipyridyl, which exhibit outstanding performance in terms of high optical variation, fast response speed, long cyclability, etc. Furthermore, the palette area of the CLC layers is dramatically expanded about 5 times more than reported by introducing a birefringent film. The vertically stacked ECDs integrate merits of both CLCs (high color purity and rich hues) and viologens (large variation and low voltage response), which will likely encourage attempts at three‐dimensional colorful EC displays and broaden its applications.