Flexible polymer dispersed liquid crystal film with graphene transparent electrodes

• Flexible Polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film.
• Graphene layers as transparent electrodes.
• PDLC film bent with a radius of 2 mm.
• Commercialization of graphene transparent electrodes.

A flexible polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film with graphene layers as transparent electrodes was fabricated by combining a UV curable polymer and a nematic liquid crystal. The PDLC film with a dimension of 5 × 10 cm2 was flexible and operated normally with no damage when it was bent with a radius of 2 mm. Instead of using conventional transparent conducting film, the single-layer-graphene transferred on PET film was used as transparent electrodes. The thickness of the graphene-PDLC was about 210–220 μm. The single-layer-graphene grown by thermal chemical vapor deposition was transferred onto the PET film, and its sheet resistance was about 1.2 kΩ/□. The controllable transmission range between the on and off states was about 60% in the visible range. The response time for the turn-on and off processes were estimated to be 0.3 and 32 ms, respectively. This successful fabrication of graphene based PDLC is a crucial step toward paving the way for the commercialization of the emerging material, graphene.