Dual structure of cholesteric liquid crystal device for high reflectance

The structure of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) undergoes a helical distortion which is left-handed or righthanded. By the right-hand CLC layer, Left-handed polarized light is reflected and vice versa. The color reflected by the selective reflection depends on the chiral pitch and the anisotropy of the refractive index. However, the reflectance of the single CLC layer is theoretically limited to 50% because only one of right- or left-handed circularly polarized light is reflected. In this paper, we demonstrate the enhanced reflectance of a dual-CLC device which can reflect both right- and left-handed circularly polarized light.