In the field of liquid crystals, blue phases (BPs) are one of the most unique and interesting sub-phases. Blue-phase liquid crystal holds the potential to become next-generation display and photonics device because of its sub-millisecond gray-to-gray response time, alignment-layer-free process, optically isotropic dark state, and cell gap insensitivity. The BPLC is a highly chiral liquid crystal system possessing crystal like unit cell structure and exist over a small temperature range (0.5-2 °C) between isotropic and chiral nematic (N*) thermotropic phase. The narrow phase range has been an intrinsic problem for blue phase, and a useful strategy of widening the phase is by adding polymer to form a polymer stabilised blue phase liquid crystal. In this paper, we demonstrate polymer stabilization using two different cases: a room temperature mixture containing E8, PE-5CNF and CPP-3FF, and a high temperature mixture using a single molecule blue phase liquid crystal material, TCB5. Comparison of the polymer stabilization effects on these two cases will be discussed, in the perspective of their potential in electro-optic applications.

Evidence of the control of yield and different morphological features of polyaniline (PANI), along with their higher thermal stability is reported. The syntheses were performed by varying the reaction time from 2 to 6 hours for three different methods using three different oxidizing agents. The freshly prepared PANI was investigated by means of fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The polymer yield was increased with the increasing of reaction time from 2 to 6 h for all oxidants in the synthesis approaches; while the reverse trend was observed for KPS in rapid mixing polymerization and mechanical stirring methods. The highest yield was obtained for 6 h reaction time using APS through mechanical stirring method. FESEM analysis showed the growth of regular and uniform PANI nanoparticles, along with the prevention of secondary growth and agglomeration of primary nanofibers using all three oxidizing agents for sonochemistry and rapid mixing polymerization method, except H2O2 in the case of later technique. However, irregular and agglomerated PANI was found for all oxidants in mechanical stirring method. TGA data showed that PANI synthesized by mechanical stirring method is thermally more stable than those prepared by sonochemistry and rapid mixing polymerization.