Enhanced adhesion and transmittance uniformity in laminated polymer-dispersed liquid crystal films

We propose a two-step UV irradiation procedure to fabricate polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films by lamination. During the first UV treatment, before lamination, the UV-curable monomers coated on one film substrate are solidified through photo-polymerization as the phase separation between the liquid crystals and the monomers. Introducing an adhesion-enhancement layer on the other plastic substrate and controlling the UV irradiation conditions ensure that UV-induced cross-linkable functional groups remain on the surfaces of the photo-polymerized layers. Thereby, the adhesion stability between the top and bottom films is much improved during a second (post-lamination) UV treatment by further UV-induced cross-linking at the interface. Because the adhesion-enhancement and PDLC layers prepared by the bar-coating process are solidified before lamination, the PDLC droplet distribution and the cell gap between the two plastic substrates remain uniform under the lamination pressure. This ensures that the voltage-controlled light transmittance is uniform across the entire sample.