MINI REVIEW article
Front. Phys.
Sec. Optics and Photonics
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Light Emission and Photonic DevicesView all 4 articles
Overview of Stressed Liquid Crystal
Provisionally accepted
Jiahui Chen1
Lin Xu1*
Chi Zhang2*Xitong Liang1Ziling Chen1Han Zheng1Xu Wang1Gaoyang Liu1Jiacheng Dong1Chenxuan Ren1
Jun Dai1
Youyou Hu1- 1江苏科技大学, 江苏省镇江市, China
- 2National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security, Tianjin, China
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Stressed liquid crystal (SLC), discovered twenty years ago in the study of polymer dispersed liquid crystals and polymer network liquid crystals, has attracted great interest from researchers. SLC achieves decoupling of liquid crystal film thickness and switching speed, representing a significant breakthrough in fast response and large phase modulation materials. This paper reviews the related concepts of stressed liquid crystals, precautions in their preparation, and summarizes factors affecting their electro-optic properties; it also introduces research progress and discusses future development directions in applications such as smart glass, tunable attenuators, Fourier spectrometers, adaptive optics, liquid crystal shutters, tunable gratings, and optical phased arrays. Analysis of existing research indicates that stressed liquid crystals have important applications and industrial potential in high-speed dynamic networks, passive smart dimming, miniature Fourier spectrometers, AR/VR dynamic focusing, laser communication beam control, and high-resolution liquid crystal shutters.
Keywords: Fast Response2, LightModulation5, Phase Delay3, Shear Effect4, Stressed Liquid Crysta1
Received: 17 Oct 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Xu, Zhang, Liang, Chen, Zheng, Wang, Liu, Dong, Ren, Dai and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lin Xu
Chi Zhang
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