Facile Anisotropic Deswelling Method for Realizing Large-Area Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomers with Uniform Structural Color and Broad-Range Mechanochromic Response

Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs) are soft and dynamic photonic elements that couple the circularly polarized structural color from the cholesteric helix to the viscoelasticity of rubbers: the reflection color is mechanically tunable (mechanochromic response) over a broad range. This requires uniform helix orientation, previously realized by long-term centrifugation to ensure anisotropic deswelling, or using sacrificial substrates or external fields. The present paper presents a simple, reproducible, and scalable method to fabricate highly elastic, large-area, millimeters thick CLCE sheets with intense uniform reflection color that is repeatably, rapidly, and continuously tunable across the full visible spectrum by stretching or compressing. A precursor solution is poured onto a substrate and allowed to polymerize into a 3D network during solvent evaporation. Pinning to the substrate prevents in-plane shrinkage, thereby realizing anisotropic deswelling in an unprecedentedly simple manner. Quantitative stress-strain-reflection wavelength characterization reveals behavior in line with theoretical predictions: two linear regimes are identified for strains below and above the helix unwinding threshold, respectively. Up to a doubling of the sample length, the continuous color variation across the full visible spectrum repeatedly follows a volume conserving function of the strain, allowing the CLCE to be used as optical high-resolution strain sensor.